Mexico City, Apr 13 (EFE).- Mexican deputies halted this Thursday reforms to the Electoral Tribunal of the Federal Judiciary (Tepjf), the body in charge of resolving controversies in electoral matters, which generated controversy among the political parties themselves, groups feminists, LGBT and minorities, “for representing setbacks” in terms of gender parity and affirmative actions in favor of vulnerable groups.
The legal changes also sought to modify the powers of the autonomous judicial body that rules on electoral matters, for which reason opposition parties, such as the Movimiento Ciudadano (MC), warned that this would give political parties immunity before the TEPJF as they would not be able to influence their internal processes.
“The proposal weakens democratic progress and ends 26 years of work and consolidation of this specialized body to guarantee electoral political rights,” MC said in a statement.
However, the coordinators of all the parliamentary fractions of the lower house of the Mexican Congress decided to postpone their discussion and agreed to “perfect the design of the opinion. So that there are no doubts”, explained the coordinator of the Political Coordination Board of the San Lázaro legislative compound, Ignacio Mier.
“Faced with public opinion, we state that until now consensus has not been reached to approve this reform and, in the face of public opinion’s questioning, regarding it, we want to inform you that we will continue working to legislate as is our obligation in favor of the mexicanos”, reads the agreements signed by the coordinators of all the parties represented in the Mexican Congress.
In this sense, the document exposed by Mier, also coordinator of the official bench of the National Regeneration Movement (Morena), defends that it is false that this initiative “violates or restricts the powers of the Tepjf.”
Likewise, it maintains that “it is false –as can be seen in the text- that it threatens gender parity or a regression of the rights acquired by minorities. It is also false that political parties were allowed to act with impunity”.
In contrast, senators from Morena had warned that the proposed reform would not be supported in the Upper House, arguments that were supported by a group of legislators from the National Action Party (PAN), such as Senator Damián Zepeda; from the Plural Group, such as Germán Martínez, among others.
Previously, the organization Civil Society Mexico, which in the past has called for marches to defend the National Electoral Institute (INE) from the reforms of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, while groups that represent historically discriminated populations, such as LGBT+ Rights Mexico, the Collective of People with Disabilities, YAAJ Mexico and the Indigenous Professional Center for Counseling, Defense and Translation, warned of possible setbacks in their representation.
These groups considered that advances could be lost, such as the seats and candidacies that the TEPJF has ordered to respect for these populations.
“This initiative in Deputies is very worrying. It would prevent the TEPJF from enforcing rules on the equal participation of women, LGBT people and other minorities in politics,” Tyler Mattiace, a Human Rights Watch (HRW) researcher, agreed on Twitter.
Faced with these pressures, the first party to back down in the Chamber of Deputies was the conservative PAN, which announced along with the Institutional Revolutionary Parties (PRI) and the Democratic Revolution (PRD), with whom it forms an opposition bloc, which already They would not support this initiative.
“We say it categorically, after a broad internal discussion, the PRI caucus has decided not to support any constitutional initiative that questions gender parity and affirmative action,” declared PRI president Alejandro Moreno.
The proposal to postpone its discussion was also supported by the ruling Morena and his allies, the Green Ecologist Parties of Mexico (PVEM) and Labor (PT), who also signed agreements to refine this proposal.
