Politics: Broader meaning of the INE confirmations
When Congress confirmed, in an almost unanimous vote, four new members of the governing body of the National Electoral Institute (INE), it sent a powerful message as to the autonomy and independence of the electoral authority ahead of the 2021 midterms, the most extensive electoral event in Mexico’s history. It also afforded a collective sigh of relief in many quarters. Not long ago such an auspicious outcome seemed improbable, and the reasons behind that change of fortune may reflect a broader shift in the federal government’s political calculations.
President López Obrador’s 2018 victory did nothing to ease his decades-old distrust of the INE, and that animosity had increasingly been on display in recent months. As recently as July 1 he anointed himself “the guardian of [next year’s] elections,” implicitly usurping the role of the INE, which he has relentlessly worked to defund and discredit. The discourse emanating from the official camp suggested the administration saw the nomination process as an opportunity to stack the INE council in favor of AMLO’s political project, an objective easily within reach given their commanding majority in the Chamber of Deputies.
Surprisingly, Morena congressional leaders opted to respect the non-partisan selection process and work to achieve the broadest consensus possible, even after more radical 4T supporters in Congress tried to overturn the results.
It is not yet clear whether López Obrador played an active role in getting the radical camp to back down, but two other developments in recent weeks out of character with the president’s usual radical and polarizing attitudes should not be overlooked: an effort to ease tensions with three opposition governors who had been among his harshest critics, and his embrace of a proposal for reforming the social security pension system supported by the Business Coordinating Council, against which he had been lashing out ever since it dared to suggest a plan for dealing with the economic crisis in early May. We shouldn’t overlook the fact that the president has done this at a time when the economy is tanking and the pandemic rages.
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