Politics: Democracy under siege by the presidential electoral reform proposal
President López Obrador’s governing project is proving increasingly costly for the country in practically every sphere, including security, health, education, the environment and others. Through the first four years of Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s presidency, there has been a concerted effort to weaken democratic processes, but so far that has largely been in the form of a consistent, systematic yet gradual process designed to give the illusion that the canon of democracy has not been abandoned. But now the administration is gearing up for a battle in Congress in which it hopes to take major strides in its plan to dismantle the country’s remaining democratic institutions and practices in order that the daily exercise of power is personalized, concentrated in the figure of the president, setting aside democratic rules in the process.
The administration has yet to make public all the measures it hopes to include in the political reform process it has long described as one of its objectives and which it will try to pass in the current Congress. Obviously it hopes to find some points on which it can reach an understanding with at least some opposition lawmakers whom it needs to get any constitutional reforms passed and ratified, as it managed to do with the PRI on the question of extending the period in which the military will continue to assume responsibility for public security. For starters it hopes to strip the National Electoral Institute of its autonomy and introduce new rules that would allow the government to stack both the INE and the Electoral Tribunal with administration loyalists, and slash the number of members of Congress as well as public funding for political parties, confident that Morena will continue to enjoy privileged access to government coffers.
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