The promise of debate and the doubts that do not dissipate
Rosa Icela Rodríguez, the Secretary of the Interior, went out to calm the waters. In the Senate, before the Morena parliamentary group, he assured that the electoral reform initiative that Claudia Sheinbaum will send is not a slab. She said she’s open to “corrections and improvements.” Sounds good, right? As a democratic gesture.
But in this job, one learns to listen to what is not said. And to remember. Senator Javier Corral Jurado, who was at that private meeting, gave a key piece of information: Rodríguez did not ask to approve the text “as is.” He only asked to submit it to analysis. It’s a subtle difference, but important. “Vote for this” is not the same as “discuss this.”
The problem is that the devil, as always, is in the details. And the details that worry some legislators within Morena itself are juicy: the proportional representation model, public financing of parties and, above all…
The eternal shadow over the referee
That’s the nerve point. The autonomy of the National Electoral Institute (INE). Corral Jurado issued the alert: some versions of the initiative contemplate the popular election of electoral councilors.
“The autonomy of the electoral referee is a delicate issue and must be preserved to guarantee the fairness of the democratic system,”said the senator.
I translate: putting your finger on how the referee is chosen can be the first step to twisting the game. It is an old debate in new clothes. Every time someone talks about “perfecting” or “improving” the INE, my antennae go up. Because recent history has given us clear lessons about what happens when power wants to get too close to the body that must monitor it.
Corral asks to balance the improvement of laws without harming pluralism. A laudable wish. The million-dollar question is whether this balance is possible when the discussion is based on an initiative whose final details are still a mystery to many.
Rodríguez says everything is negotiable. The benches will have the floor. It sounds like an opening. But in politics, promises of dialogue are sometimes just courtesy before the struggle. We will see in the coming weeks if legislators will really be able to shape this reform or if they will only be stone-cold guests in an already written script.
Meanwhile, the autonomy of the INE remains in the crosshairs. And that, dear readers, is never good news for democracy.
