Tens of thousands demonstrate against the president’s electoral reform project

A human tide flooded Mexico City’s Central Avenue on Sunday, November 13. Tens of thousands of demonstrators have already taken to the streets to protest the electoral reform project implemented by leftist President Andres Manuel López Obrador (AMLO). This is the largest anti-government rally that has been organized in the past four years.

Protesters swept through Paseo de la Reforma to reject a reform project that, according to its opponents, threatens the independence of the National Electoral Institute, which has been tasked with organizing elections since its creation in October 1990.

Among them were former President Vicente Fox (2000-2006) and Representative Santiago Creel, who held the rotating presidency of the Chamber for a year, both members of the National Action Party, which represents the right-wing opposition.

Reducing the number of parliamentarians

current president “He wants all elections to depend on the government again, to be able to manipulate it as it pleases and stay in power”Ms April, 53, who came with her husband to demonstrate, was accused. During the march, the demonstrators wore pink T-shirts from the National Institute of Statistics.

Still popular after nearly four years in office, President Lopez Obrador believes that the National Electoral Institute has covered electoral fraud during previous elections in 2006 and 2012, which he lost. The reform he advocates therefore envisages that the members of the board of directors of the National Election Institute are elected by popular vote, that is, through the mediator of the big electors.

but that is not all. It also provides for a reduction in support for political parties and a significant reduction in the number of members of Parliament. Thus, the number of federal parliament seats will increase from 500 to 300 while the number of senators will decrease from 128 to 96.

During the march, a banner was erected: “I am not corrupt, class, racist, hypocritical”, In reference to the qualities that Lopez Obrador was able to use last week to exclude opponents of reform.

But for Francisco Videla, a 50-year-old merchant who came to protest with family and friends on Sunday, “The issue is not opposing today’s government, but against any government that wants today or tomorrow to control the elections.”He also told Agence France-Presse.

Mr. López Obrador was elected in 2018 to a single six-year term ending in 2024, the date of the next presidential election. His party, the Movement for National Regeneration (Morena) and its allies currently control both houses.