Córdova and Murayama, close to saying goodbye to the INE; Deputies will propose the new presiding councillor

Four of the 11 electoral councillors who make up the General Council of the National Electoral Institute (INE) are one year away from completing their term, including Lorenzo Córdova and Ciro Murayama, who have been the targets of the criticism of the federal government in recent weeks on the issue of the Revocation of Mandate.

In addition, in April 2023, Adriana Margarita Favela Herrera and José Roberto Ruiz Saldaña will leave the Institute, so the Chamber of Deputies will appoint their relays, who will be responsible for conducting the process of the federal election of 2024, in which the renewal of the Presidency of the Republic stands out.

President Andrés Manuel López Obrador announced that after the Revocation of Mandate, he will send to Congress an Electoral Reform initiative that aims to an in-depth re-engineering of the INE, where electoral councillors would be elected by popular vote, although the candidates would be proposed by the Executive and Legislative Branch.

Regardless of the announcement of this constitutional reform, legislation in force to date indicates that next year the Chamber of Deputies should issue a call for aspiring electoral councillors to register and an evaluation committee to select a list of candidates with the best profiles, who must attend interviews to demonstrate their technical capacity in electoral matters.

Subsequently, the evaluation committee of the Chamber of Deputies will select a list of the best candidates, which will be presented to the Political Coordination Board, and in order to select the four electoral councillors for the period 2023-2032, the favorable vote of two thirds of the legislators will be required present at the plenary session.

In accordance with the General Law on Electoral Institutions and Procedures, the Presiding Councillor of the INE General Council will be elected by two thirds of the Deputies, 'so Morena and her allies will be decisive in 2023 for the appointment of Lorenzo Córdova's relay.

It should be noted that in San Lázaro, Morena has 202 of the 500 seats, and together with its allies PT and PVEM they number 279, so they would have the greatest chance of defining the new four members of the INE.

This weekend controversy arose due to the fact that the Secretary of the Interior, Adán Augusto López, participated in a public event in Coahuila in which he openly demonstrated in favor of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador in the face of the imminent day of the revocation of the mandate. In addition, he pointed out that the INE will soon be reformed and it will be the people who will vote for the electoral councillors and magistrates, who will be removed from a list proposed by the Executive, Legislative and Judicial branches.

The head of government of Mexico City, Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo, insisted on Monday that she supports the proposal to reform the INE and said that “it is time to change "the conditions under which the electoral body operates, since it considered that the members of the General Council should not earn more than the President of the Republic.

Sheinbaum, who is considered one of the candidates for the 2024 presidential candidacy, added that “it is time to change it because of the way electoral reforms took place and the privileges enjoyed by electoral councilors, only dreams that are above the president's salary are above the salary of the president, are above the salary among Mexicans, who did not end their privileges in the Electoral Council but continue to use public resources [...] that is unsustainable”.

We will have to wait for the 10th of April and the Revocation of Mandate to know in detail the proposal for Constitutional Reform aimed at reengineering the electoral body that will organize and execute the 2024 presidential election.

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