Without knowing it –or maybe they did, but they did not care–, the failure of all Plan B with which President López Obrador sought to weaken the electoral authorities for the 2024 presidential succession took place in December 2022, just when deputies and senators from Morena and their allies committed irregularities in the legislative processes to approve the first part of the package of reforms to the INE and the Electoral Tribunal; Later, due to similar violations committed to approve the second part of Plan B, the Supreme Court ended up invalidating them this Thursday the 22nd. Thus, the elections in 2024 will be held with the current rules of the game and not with those that the president intended to take advantage of.
MEXICO CITY (Process).- The Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation (SCJN) gave the final blow to the claim of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador that the Executive intervene, once again, in the electoral processes, starting with his own succession in 2024.
On Thursday the 22nd, the country’s Highest Court eradicated the second part of what the president called “Plan B” of the electoral reform, published last March in which the budgetary and organic infrastructure of the National Electoral Institute (INE) and the Electoral Tribunal of the Federal Judiciary (TEPJF), and more flexible rules were established for the use of public resources by political parties, and it was allowed to modify their basic documents without the intervention of the electoral authorities.
It even granted the federal government access to the electoral lists, and the PREP, that is, the system that gives the preliminary results of federal elections, disappeared, in addition to the beginning of the electoral process from September to October.
On the eve of the resolution, which was anticipated to be contrary to his proposal, the president again attacked the ministers, this time, for not analyzing the reform in depth and invalidating it for “mere formalities”, such as violations of the legislative procedure.
“I consider that it is an invasion, an interference with the Legislative Power, they are going to correct the plan of the Legislative Power, already converted into the supreme conservative power, in defense of the conservative minority. They are arguing that the law was not discussed in Congress, it was not discussed enough, when it was discussed, and furthermore the conservative bloc in Congress did not even want to participate in anything. That is why they are going to annul the electoral law ”, the president complained hours before the SCJN discussed the project of Javier Laynez Potisek.
“Of course it is a matter of form, but the form is substance when it comes to the interference of a power in matters that are the responsibility of another,” he added.
Plan B was the option that the president found for his failed Plan A, the constitutional reform initiative that he presented in 2022, but which was rejected in December of that same year by the Union Congress.
Anticipating that failure because he knew that his party and allies did not have enough votes, since November of that same year the president promoted reforms to the General Law of Social Communication, to the Law of Administrative Responsibilities, General Law of Electoral Institutions and Procedures, General Law of Political Parties, Organic Law of the Judiciary of the Federation and the issuance of the General Law of the Means of Challenge in Electoral Matters, which were approved by the legislative majority of Morena in two blocks and were later known as Plan B , part 1 and 2.
