Erika Hernandez/Agencia Reforma
Saturday, January 28, 2023 | 12:23 p.m.
Mexico City.- The political scenario focuses on the consequences that Plan B of the electoral reform will cause.
This is the package of modifications to secondary laws, proposed by President Andrés Manuel López Obrador in the face of the Opposition’s refusal to a constitutional reform, which sought, among other things, to elect electoral advisers and magistrates by direct vote of the citizens.
A portion of Plan B has already been approved by the Chamber of Deputies and is pending in the Senate, but its application contemplates the disappearance of 1,264 members of the INE district and local boards in the country, as well as the merger of a dozen directorates and units of central offices.
It also modifies procedures and deadlines of the 2024 electoral process.
With this, argues Morena, at least 3,605 million pesos would be saved, which is equivalent, they argue, to the pensions of 143,000 older adults or 52,000 supports from the Youth Building the Future Program.
The electoral advisors assure that this will not only impact the organization of the presidential election, but also the concurrent elections in 31 states.
“We must be clear: these changes are intended without diagnosis, cutting people, collapsing electoral work. Power wants to impose convenient rules now for power, tearing down those that allow us equity today. Tear down what power does not like today “, pointed out the counselor Claudia Zavala.
On Wednesday, the INE General Council discussed the 165-page diagnosis made by its technical areas, which warns that Plan B puts the 2024 elections at risk.
“We must all prepare ourselves to live in 2024 weeks of conflict in the face of what could be an evident inequality in the development of the campaigns and an inevitable uncertainty about the results of said elections; with everything and what this implies, I insist, in matters of democratic governance and public peace,” said Lorenzo Córdova, president of the INE, who left that post in April.
In the same session, the 11 directors described dozens of activities, programs or processes that are negatively impacted.
most critical
Undoubtedly, warns the INE, the most critical thing is to change the 300 district boards that there are 300 in the Country from permanent to temporary and reduce their committees, which will go from five to one, since the committees of Organization, Training, Federal Electoral Registry would disappear and the secretary member, and all his functions would be assumed by an operative member.
The dismissed incumbents, who came to the INE for a knowledge contest of the Electoral Professional Service, would be 1,200, whose salary is 43,000 net pesos.
In the Local Boards, one for each entity, the Organization member would disappear, which would be merged with the Training member, and the executive member, whose salaries are 66,000 and 73,000 net pesos, respectively. Added would be 64 holders.
In central offices, various directorates and units are merged, which will also imply layoffs.
“Indeed, by not being able to take control of the General Council, to put it in plain Spanish, by not being able to seize the head, the option was to mutilate the body. They have mutilated us, but we are not dead,” said Córdova, before the proposal to dismiss 86 percent of the Professional Electoral Service.
In the electoral process
The thinning of the structure and the new procedures and deadlines will cause effects, warns the INE, in the electoral result, since the certainty and legitimacy of the election is disrupted.
For example, the Preliminary Results Program (PREP) is maintained, but also the district count system; a single ballot is established, which has implications for the result; the parties will not be able to have a copy of the results of the box, so it is unknown how the comparison will be.
“(With the new design of the process) the computation would take longer and potentially be more conflictive,” indicates the diagnosis.
There will be less staff for the partial and total vote counts, the integration of the polling stations changes, since only one insaculation is requested and it is established that 100 percent of those selected will not be visited.
In addition to establishing that older people are prioritized, when they are currently the last to be chosen, due to the conditions in which they will be on the day of the working day.
“A significant bias is introduced in the randomness with which the polling stations are integrated and the objectivity in the assignment of positions is affected, privileging in the highest positions a sector of the population directly benefited by social programs,” said counselor Martín Face.
Morena proposes that the registration of representatives of the parties in polling stations can be done 48 hours before the election, and not 13 days like now, and their substitution occurs on the same day of the election, and not 10 days before.
This means that there is no time to communicate the changes to the polling booth officials, and consequently they are prevented from entering, causing the polling booth to be null and void.
operability
The councilors warn about the implications of changing the credentialing modules, from rented spaces, to government offices, since the opening or security of the equipment and information is not guaranteed.
They also see setbacks in the so-called affirmative actions and parity: they reduce the obligation of the parties to nominate 50 candidacies for deputies for migrants, youth, indigenous people, diversity and Afro-Mexican women to 25.
While in terms of control, various mechanisms are eliminated to guarantee accountability.
As part of the electoral package, a Social Communication Law was approved, which has already been published by the Executive, and with which officials are allowed to express their opinion on prohibited topics in electoral processes, and freedom of expression is considered.
On Wednesday, all the councilors ordered the executive secretary of the INE, Edmundo Jacobo, to file the necessary appeals before the Supreme Court and the Electoral Tribunal, to stop said reform.
