Mexico’s President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has come out in support of a bill that would reduce the budget of the country’s electoral agency and weaken oversight of campaign spending. The president has long been critical of the agency for costing taxpayers too much and paying high salaries. The bill was approved by Mexico’s Senate in a 72-50 vote late Wednesday.
Lopez Obrador expects court challenges to the bill, but believes it will survive them as none of it is “outside the law”. The new law would cut salaries and funding for local election offices, reduce training for citizens who operate and oversee polling stations, and lessen sanctions for candidates who fail to report campaign spending.
The president has denied that the reform package could put elections in Mexico at risk. He has been critical of the electoral institute since 2006, when he lost the presidency by a narrow margin and denounced his defeat as fraudulent. He has also been angered by the fact that some top electoral officials are paid more than the president.
Protests are already planned against the reform in multiple cities in Mexico, encouraged by the electoral institute itself. Federico Estevez, a retired political science professor at the Autonomous Technological Institute of Mexico, said the opposition’s claims that Lopez Obrador is “dismantling democracy” are exaggerated. He argued that it is a different conception of democracy, “more majoritarian, and less dependent on inadequate, unproductive and mistaken elites”.
Lopez Obrador remains highly popular in Mexico, with approval ratings of about 60 percent. Elections in Mexico are expensive by international standards, in part because almost all legal campaign financing is, by law, supplied by the government. The electoral institute also issues the secure voter ID cards that are the most commonly accepted form of identification in Mexico, and oversees balloting in remote and often dangerous corners of the country.
Lorenzo Cordova, the institute’s leader, has been a frequent target of Lopez Obrador and has aggressively defended the agency. Before Wednesday’s vote, Cordova wrote on his Twitter account that the reforms “seek to cut thousands of people who work every day to guarantee trustworthy elections, something that will of course pose a risk for future elections”.
Mexico’s President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has defended a controversial bill that would cut the budget of the country’s electoral agency and weaken oversight of campaign spending. The president has long criticised the agency for costing taxpayers too much and paying high salaries, and said he will sign the new bill into law even though electoral authorities say it could weaken democracy in Mexico.
The bill was approved late on Wednesday by Mexico’s Senate in a 72-50 vote. It would cut salaries and funding for local election offices and reduce training for citizens who operate and oversee polling stations. It would also lessen sanctions for candidates who fail to report campaign spending. Lopez Obrador expects court challenges to the bill, but believes it will survive them as none of it is “outside the law”.
The president has repeatedly denied that the reform package could put elections in Mexico at risk. He has been critical of the electoral institute since 2006, when he lost the presidency by a narrow margin and denounced his defeat as fraudulent. He has also been angered by the fact that some top electoral officials are paid more than the president.
Protests are already planned against the reform in multiple cities in Mexico, encouraged by the electoral institute itself. Federico Estevez, a retired political science professor at the Autonomous Technological Institute of Mexico, said the opposition’s claims that Lopez Obrador is “dismantling democracy” are exaggerated. He argued that it is a different conception of democracy, “more majoritarian, and less dependent on inadequate, unproductive and mistaken elites”.
Lopez Obrador remains highly popular in Mexico, with approval ratings of about 60 percent. Elections in Mexico are expensive by international standards, in part because almost all legal campaign financing is, by law, supplied by the government. The electoral institute also issues secure voter ID cards that are the most commonly accepted form of identification in Mexico, and oversees balloting in remote and often dangerous corners of the country.
Lorenzo Cordova, the institute’s leader, has been a frequent target of Lopez Obrador and has aggressively defended the agency. Before Wednesday’s vote, Cordova wrote on his Twitter account that the reforms “seek to cut thousands of people who work every day to guarantee trustworthy elections, something that will of course pose a risk for future elections”. Despite this opposition, Lopez Obrador is determined to sign the bill into law.