President López Obrador and Morena have put the INE against the wall. On the one hand, they promote the holding of a mandate revocation process and, on the other, they deny the electoral authority the resources to organize it under the terms established by law.
The President of the Republic himself promotes the revocation consultation, in order to obtain his ratification in office. With this, he seeks to inject his government with new energy during the second half of the six-year term.
The holding of the revocation consultation can already be taken for granted. The Superior Chamber of the Electoral Tribunal was in charge of removing the only obstacle that its promoters had in front of them. It abolished the obligation to use the app developed by the INE to collect support signatures. This also eliminated the only means to ensure the authenticity of citizen support for this exercise.
The recall consultation has to be organized with the highest standards of electoral administration. It is no wonder, since the procedure is designed to remove the President of the Republic, the highest political position in the country.
For this reason, the Federal Mandate Revocation Law, approved by Morena and his allies in Congress, orders that “the same number of polls that were determined for the day of the previous electoral process be installed, taking into account the update that corresponds to the nominal listing ”.
In other words, the INE is prevented by law from reducing the highest cost of organizing an election: the integration of polling stations. In the case of the revocation of the mandate, as it did with the popular consultation on the former presidents, held in August. Additionally, it has to install 300 district councils and 32 local councils, the organs that supervise the organization of the elections in the districts and the states.
The Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation instructed that, for citizen participation exercises established in the Constitution, such as popular consultations or the revocation of mandate, the INE has to formulate a “precautionary budget”. They are contingent expenses that the INE must foresee in its request for resources to the Chamber of Deputies and, if not used, return them to the Federation Treasury.
The INE requested a precautionary budget for 5,743 million pesos, of which 3,830 million pesos would be used in the process of revocation of the mandate and 1,913 million pesos in a possible popular consultation, which had to be carried out at the request of Congress or the president of the Republic.
The Chamber of Deputies applied a cut of 4.913 million pesos. The measure leaves the INE with only 830 million pesos to organize the mandate revocation process. We are not even talking about an eventual popular consultation.
The INE cannot have the resources provided for the organization of the eight local electoral processes to be held in 2022, about 1,858 million pesos. Governments are renewed in six states, and in the other two the local legislature and city councils.
There is also no way that with savings from the base budget, the INE can get the nearly 3,000 million pesos that it needs to organize the recall consultation that the president wants. With regard to using the resources of the INE trusts, as suggested by the Secretary of the Interior, there is a clear legal impediment. Said funds can only be used for the purposes for which they were established.
Morena and his allies are creating a constitutional crisis by giving the INE a mandate and denying it the minimum resources to carry it out. The matter must end up in the hands of the Supreme Court of Justice. It is what happens when politics fails.
* Professor at CIDE.
Twitter: @BenitoNacif
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Dr. Benito Nacif is a professor in the Political Studies Division of the Center for Economic Research and Teaching (CIDE). He was Electoral Counselor of the National Electoral Institute (INE) from 2014 to 2020 and of the Federal Electoral Institute (IFE) from 2008 to 2014.
Reference-www.eleconomista.com.mx