Sheinbaum Says She Will Resubmit Electoral Reform After Elections
President Sheinbaum said she will propose her electoral reform again once elections pass, and criticized ex-INE head Guadalupe Taddei at her Nov. 9 briefing.
President Claudia Sheinbaum said at her Monday, Nov. 9 morning press conference at Palacio Nacional that she will present her electoral reform again once the election period ends. She also said the members of the National Electoral Institute (INE, Mexico’s independent election authority) should cut their own pay, according to El Universal.
The remarks came after reporters played audio in which former president Andrés Manuel López Obrador backed Guadalupe Taddei to head the INE. Sheinbaum acknowledged the endorsement and said López Obrador could not have known what would happen two years later.
What Sheinbaum says the reform would change
Sheinbaum said her earlier electoral reform proposal was not approved. She described a “plan B” of which one part passed and another did not. When elections are over, she said, she will propose the reform again.
Her list of goals: political parties should receive less funding, and the plurinominal seats (legislative seats assigned by party lists rather than direct vote) should not exist in their current form. She also wants more citizen participation, elections that use fewer public resources, and guaranteed transparency in the vote. She said some parties refused to put their plurinominal seats in question.
The dispute over Taddei
Sheinbaum repeated that Taddei, who has left the INE presidency, betrayed the Mexican people. She said Taddei came from a group formed under Lorenzo Córdova, the former INE president. Taddei became head of the electoral institute of Sonora in 2014, when Córdova led the INE council.
The president said all parties except Movimiento Ciudadano voted for the shortlist of five candidates, and that Taddei was then selected by a raffle. She used this to argue the choice was not only Morena’s. Sheinbaum also distanced herself from Morena, the governing party, on the matter.
She said the INE needs to clean itself up. Although the institute is autonomous, she said it should adopt bidding rules that do not lead to contracts going to monopolies or duopolies, which she said raise the cost of elections and feed corruption that existed for years.
Investigations and ballot printing
Sheinbaum said the Federal Auditor’s Office (ASF), the Attorney General’s Office (FGR) and the Financial Intelligence Unit (UIF) are already running procedures. She said anyone who commits corruption, from any party and Morena in particular, must be punished.
She also referred to Colombia’s former president Gustavo Petro, who accused a company of being part of “electoral fraud” in Colombia’s latest election. Sheinbaum said the same company is present in Mexico and printed the ballots for Coahuila in the most recent election there. She said she had not known this, and that such matters must be made transparent and open to competition.
Why it matters
The president is tying a new reform push to the INE’s procurement and leadership problems. Her proposals on party financing and proportional-representation seats would change how Congress is composed and how much public money parties receive. No date for the new proposal was given beyond “after the elections.”
El Universal also reported, in related items, that INE module workers began a partial work stoppage. The source gives no further detail on that stoppage.
Source: El Universal
