The low participation of citizens in the Mandate Revocation consultation would be used as an argument for the political-electoral reform sought by the head of the federal Executive, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, warned former electoral councilors.
For Arturo Sánchez Gutiérrez, former director of the National Electoral Institute (INE), this autonomous body did a satisfactory job during the citizen participation day, he considered that the first success was to break with the false news chains that circulated.
“The second argument, and it is the important one, is that all the citizen councils were installed in the states and districts, so I think that the electoral machinery of the INE worked properly. Third, it is very important that at 11 in the morning (yesterday) 98% of the boxes were installed. The work of the INE is being done well and in that sense it stands out very well”, he stated.
For his part, Marco Antonio Baños Martínez, also a former counselor of the national electoral body, stressed that despite being an institution that was “hurt, beaten, and at odds with the government,” it proved to be solid, professional, and capable of meeting these challenges.
“This has never been seen, it is the most judicialized procedure in history and where the greatest verbal violence and political mobility have been seen that have harmed the Constitution and the law by the public servants themselves in favor of promotion.”
Changes to laws
Both specialists recognized that although citizen participation was in line with the ruling party’s expectations, this would be considered by the government as an achievement of the voters and not of the INE. On the other hand, what went wrong has the responsibility falls entirely on the Electoral Institute.
“The result of the recall is the catalyst for electoral reform regardless of the number of votes, be they many or few, the President of the Republic is going to blame everything that comes to mind on the INE and the TEPJF.”
With regard to the electoral reform proposed by the federal Executive, the former councilors explained that it is important to know these changes in depth.
“What the president told us were some glimpses of the most controversial points, but the important thing is that when we know it we will see if setbacks come, because what we know so far is that basically proposals are made that are not going to be in accordance with what you need. our democracy,” said Sánchez Gutiérrez.
For his part, Marco Baños indicated that all the issues raised by AMLO such as the election of the councilors by popular vote, the disappearance of the plurinominals; reduction of public financing and the federalization of the electoral structure need constitutional reforms and Morena does not have a qualified majority in the Senate of the Republic.
“The INE worries me for another reason, in April of the following year the terms of four electoral councilors will end and the appointment of the relays corresponds to the Chamber of Deputies and there it does have a sufficient majority to remove those who they believe more suitable to replace Lorenzo Córdova, Ciro Murayama, Adriana Favela and Roberto Ruiz”, he considered.