Ricardo Pascoe Pierce
Some time ago, the President said, in the heat of a morning press conference “mañanera“, that the electoral roll should be under the control of the Ministry of the Interior. It was a comment, like many of those made by the President in his mañaneras, half in jest, half a moment’s witticism, half an idea that he had not really thought through, and half a real survey. Well, it turns out he had thought it through and wants to implement it.
Now he cannot legally realize his dream of returning to the electoral system of Bartlett’s time. By the grace of the citizens’ vote on 6 July 2021, he lost the qualified majority in the Chamber of Deputies and, therefore, the ability to transform the Constitution at will. Why didn’t he make the changes when he could, between 2019-21? Because of blindness. Because he never imagined that he could lose the votes of the qualified majority. But he lost them and can no longer make the changes he wants.
That is why he intends to violate the country’s rule of law and vote his reforms in a Plan B, contrary to the Constitution. Ignoring the law is the house’s specialty. It ignores it at home and abroad. There is the CUSMA/USMCA/T-MEC as a witness and victim of his authoritarian spirit.
It has a dumbfounded, subservient party willing to destroy the nation’s legal scaffolding to please the President. It is a coup party, as is the President. And it seems that the President is convinced that the national army will follow him in his coup pretensions, as will most of the Supreme Court Justices.
The national tragedy could not be more significant. The intention of taking over the electoral roll is, let there be no doubt about it, to twist the 2024 presidential election results in favor of his candidate. It will modify votes and figures to ensure a majority for Morena, just as Manuel Bartlett did for Salinas in 1988. That is his model. That is his conviction of how our country should be governed.
The positive aspect of all this is that he has already seen that he can lose the elections. He knows, with numbers, that he does not have a majority of votes in the country. A popularity poll does not mean votes. It simply reiterates that we are a country with a deep-rooted presidential political culture. In all polls, people approve of the man and disapprove of his policies. When it comes to voting, there can be surprises.
The downside is that seeing that he no longer has the legislative strength to impose himself on the opposition, he now wants to do it the hard way, by imposition. Ignoring the Constitution and imposing its law is by force. By intimidating the population.
How will that be? It is no coincidence that the President now invokes the national army, saying its history is that it was created to stop coups d’état. When President López Obrador mentions “army” and “coup d’état” in the same sentence, it is because he is thinking about the feasibility of a coup d’état supported by the army. We know López Obrador: when he utters these phrases in a mañanera, it is because he has the idea at the top of his mind. He did the same with the electoral roll and a thousand other issues.
As we have seen, ignoring or violating laws is the President’s specialty. He uses the public purse as his petty cash, campaigning for his party and using official media time to vilify, denigrate and offend his opponents. His favorite political tool is polarization, inciting hatred and verbal violence, which can later turn into physical violence.
The electoral roll is the dark object of desire that the President wants to caress. To avoid this and to prevent the 2024 electoral process from drifting into violence, it must be under the supervision and control of INE. Otherwise, we will be left with a jungle of violence, hatred, and destruction of the country.
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