Huge crowds gathered in Mexico on Sunday (26) to condemn government moves to censor electoral authority as a threat to democracy, in what appears to be the biggest protest yet against the administration of President Andrés Manuel Lopez Obrador.
Organizers said more than 500,000 people turned out for the Mexico City demonstrations with footage on social media showing the central square of the Zócalo filled with protesters, who also spilled into adjacent streets. A police officer nearby said he heard the number of half a million, while others gave lower estimates.
The Mexico City government, which is controlled by Lopez Obrador’s party, said 90,000 people attended.
Mexico’s Congress on Wednesday approved a major overhaul of the National Electoral Institute (INE), an independent body that Lopez Obrador has attacked as corrupt and ineffective.
The 69-year-old president denies that his changes will weaken Mexican democracy. Critics have vowed to take the legislation, which cuts INE’s budget and staff and reduces its responsibilities, to the Supreme Court.
Veronica Echevarria, 58, a psychologist from Mexico City, said she feared Lopez Obrador’s shakeup of the INE was a proposal by the president to stay in power. He denies it.
“We are fighting to defend our democracy,” said Echevarria, wearing a cap embellished with the words “Hands off INE”.
She and thousands of others went to the Zócalo on Sunday morning, many of them waving Mexican flags and dressed in pink, the color of INE. The chants of “Viva Mexico!” and “Lopez out!” they were heard as the mass of people advanced.
US Assistant Secretary of State Brian Nichols took part in the protests late Sunday, saying on Twitter that the electoral reforms were “testing the independence of electoral and judicial institutions”.
“The United States supports well-resourced and independent electoral institutions that strengthen democratic processes and the rule of law,” he added.
INE and its predecessor played a key role in creating a pluralist democracy that, in 2000, ended decades of one-party rule, according to many political analysts.
Fernando Belaunzaran, an opposition politician who helped organize the protests, argued that the INE changes had weakened the electoral system and increased the risk of disputes that would cloud the 2024 election, when Lopez Obrador’s successor will be chosen.
“Normally, presidents try to have governability and stability for their succession, but the president is creating uncertainty,” said Belaunzaran. “He’s playing with fire.”
Mexican presidents can only serve a single six-year term.
Belaunzaran said on Twitter that more than 500,000 people had gathered in the capital on Sunday to oppose the INE review. He said demonstrations were taking place in more than 100 cities.
Protests were held in states including Jalisco, Yucatan, Nuevo Leon, Queretaro, Guanajuato and Veracruz, according to reports and footage streamed on social media.
At least 22,000 people gathered in Monterrey, the capital of Nuevo Leon, the Excelsior newspaper said, citing local authorities. Another 20,000 people took to the streets in the heart of the Jalisco capital, Guadalajara, the Milenio news network reported.
Angel Garcia, a 50-year-old protester from Mexico City, said the demonstrations were also an appeal to the Supreme Court to rule on the INE’s review, in violation of the constitution.
If Mexico didn’t protect INE, its democracy would be sent “back to the past,” argued García, a lawyer. “It’s now or never,” he said.
Lopez Obrador, a leftist who claims he was ousted from the presidency twice before finally achieving a landslide victory in the 2018 election, argues that INE is too expensive and biased in favor of its opponents. The institute denies this.
The president cast Sunday’s protests as an opposition partisan attempt to discredit his government.
According to INE, the president’s revision violates the Constitution, limits his independence and eliminates thousands of jobs dedicated to guarding the electoral process, making it more difficult to hold free and fair elections.
Lopez Obrador, whose approval rating is still at 60% or higher in opinion polls, has also undermined other autonomous bodies that check his power on the grounds that they are a drain on the public purse and hostile to his political agenda.
He says his INE shakedown will save $150 million a year.
Polls show that the President’s National Regeneration Movement (MORENA), which in just a few years has become the dominant force in Mexico, is a strong favorite to win the 2024 election.
Antonio Mondragon, a retired dentist at the Mexico City protest who voted for Lopez Obrador in 2018, said people were fed up with the president behaving like a “dictator”.
“We need to go back to being a democracy,” said the 83-year-old Mondragon, “because man is going crazy.”
Source: CNN Brasil
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