Eight senior officials from the body that oversees the elections in Mexico resign, after AMLO's reform enters into force

The National Electoral Institute of Mexico (INE) announced this Friday that eight officials of its Executive Board resigned from their position, after the approval of the electoral reform promoted by the president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador.

The resignations of its main officials will take effect from March 31 to April 3, the date on which the term of the president counselor, Lorenzo Córdova, ends, according to the newspaper La Jornada.

The new presidency of the INE will take office from April 4, as well as three new ministries.

The INE said in a statement that the resignations are irrevocable, "in full agreement" with Córdova and "were presented in order to leave

the new presidency of the National Electoral Institute

The members of the Executive General Board are proposed by the Council presidency and must be voted for by a qualified majority of eight votes, according to the Aristegui Noticias portal.

The Board is headed by the presidency of the General Council, the head of the Executive Secretariat and 16 public officials.

The officials who submitted their resignation, according to the aforementioned media, are:

executive director of Administration;

head of the Technical Inspection Unit;

head of the Electoral Litigation Technical Unit;

Legal Director;

director of the Secretariat;

head of the Technical Unit for Transparency and Protection of Personal Data;

Head of the Technical Unit for Gender Equality and Non-Discrimination;

national coordinator of Social Communication.

Thousands of people protest against an electoral reform proposed by Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, in the Zócalo of Mexico City, on Sunday, February 26, 2023. Fernando Llano / AP

AMLO's 'Plan B'

López Obrador's legislative initiative, known as "Plan B", which came into force this Friday, was promoted in December by the president after he did not obtain enough votes in Congress for a constitutional reform that implied deeper changes, such as the creation of the National Institute of Elections and Consultations to replace the current INE.

The reform

(175 million dollars), eliminates 85% of the electoral professional service, and allows the Executive to intervene in the electoral roll, which would affect the 2024 presidential elections, an analysis by the Institute of Legal Investigations.

With the reforms of various electoral laws, the INE is limited politically and economically and its structures are compacted, as well as some functions of the Electoral Tribunal of the Federal Judiciary.

The project eliminates duplication of functions of the administrative areas of the INE and reduces its 300 district offices to 264.

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For the first time, it is recognized that Mexican residents abroad can vote online.

In addition, the bases for electronic voting are established and for the first time the use of instruments such as electronic wallets, such as prepaid cards, which were used to coerce and buy the vote on election day, are suppressed or prohibited.

The parties will be obliged to guarantee candidacies from diverse groups, such as youth, indigenous people, Afro-Mexicans, migrants, LGBTQ people and people with disabilities.

What does the opposition think?

And the US?

Opposition parties criticized the reform as the "worst democratic setback in Mexico's history," according to Miguel Ángel Osorio Chong of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI).

Indira Rosales San Román, of the conservative National Action Party (PAN), affirmed that it is "just as harmful" as the original proposal for electoral reform and "a very important setback for parity."

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The electoral reform, whose constitutionality will now be analyzed by the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation (SCJN), aroused last week questions from the US State Department and US congressmen.

“Today, in Mexico we see a great debate on electoral reforms that are testing the independence of electoral and judicial institutions,” Brian Nichols, assistant secretary for the Western Hemisphere of the US Department of State, said on Twitter last Sunday. USA

In addition,

in the largest protest against an initiative by López Obrador.

The president accused his opponents of "deceiving, manipulating, a lot of people."

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AMLO's defense

The

as denounced among others by the president of the INE and defended that he seeks to cut the budget and end some supposed privileges.

The president assures that the electoral authorities act more as opposition to the Government than as a neutral arbitrator in elections.

"Everything

because there is no affectation to the electoral processes, much less to democracy, on the contrary," the president stated this Friday in his daily press conference.

López Obrador assured that the reform "is so that there are judges, counselors, honest, upright, incorruptible, and that the bureaucratic apparatus does not cost so much, that it does not cost the people so much."