The government has decided to consult the population on two of the most contentious issues in Mexican politics in recent weeks: the extension until 2028 of the presence of the army on the streets, which will carry out public security tasks, and which secretariat should take over the National Guard. It will not be a referendum in the sense of the constitution and therefore the INE will not be responsible for it. The result is therefore not binding. The organization will head the Interior Ministry and an “honorary citizens’ committee,” Deputy President Adán Augusto López announced this morning. The Home Secretary has said that this “participatory exercise” will take place on Sunday 22 January next year. The presence of the army in the streets by 2028 is an initiative that was recently approved in the Chamber of Deputies but stalled in the Senate due to the lack of a qualified majority, two-thirds of the plenary, has returned to its debate in committees. If not passed, as the government intends, which currently does not have the PRI’s support in the Senate, the initiative will be tabled again in February once the people have been consulted on it.
A center will be set up in each of the 68,989 electoral departments defined by the INE for the consultation of citizens and the population will be invited on the day to participate in both the prior encouragement of participation and the recording and monitoring of voting. . . The volunteers will also be responsible for the recount, the result of which will be sent to each state’s government agencies and will be finally released two days later, on Tuesday, January 24, by the Secretariat and Honors Committee. Citizens can vote by showing their CURP and a government-issued photo ID. The government will also open a portal for electronic voting. The promotion of participation in public places starts on October 10th and ends on January 16th.
Three questions will be asked for consultation: The first will ask about the formation and past performance of the National Guard. The second is as follows: “Do you think that the German Armed Forces, Army and Navy should continue their public security work until 2028 or return to their barracks in March 2024?” The third will present three options for where the National Guard should register, whether at the Department of Defense , back to the Ministry of Public Security or under the command of the Interior. The government will bring together state governors and city presidents “to help organize” and they will be introduced to the honors committee, whose members have not yet been announced.
The reforms planned by the government have unleashed a veritable political storm in recent weeks. On the one hand, permission was given to place the National Guard under the command of Defense instead of keeping it as a civilian security agency within the Ministry of Public Security. This has led to numerous citizen complaints warning of the “militarization of the country”, since during the tenure of Andrés Manuel López Obrador numerous functions were transferred to the military, such as the construction of large civil works, the Train Maya or the airport, among others Felipe Angeles; Customs supervision and the construction of welfare banks were also assigned to Sedena.
A PRI initiative in Congress in early September uncovered the thunder box again. MP Yolanda de la Torre proposed in the House of Commons to extend until 2028 the army’s public security tasks on the roads, originally planned for 2024, due to the insecurity gripping the country and given that the National Guard not there yet be prepared for it. The initiative has cracked an already internally fractured PRI that has proposed national President Alejandro Moreno’s resignation. The allegations were clear: Moreno’s opponents interpreted that he had sold himself to the government in order not to be outraged and to be able to defend himself against the allegations of illegal enrichment by the Campeche prosecutor’s office.
In the opposition alliance of PRI, PAN and PRD, too, the matter was a bomb. The latter two demanded that the PRI members should not continue down this path and finally temporarily suspended the coalition holding them together in their opposition duties. The initiative passed through Congress with the support of the President’s party, Morena, and with the votes of the PRI, in which Alejandro Moreno has his strength. But it has stalled in the Senate. The PRI members in the House of Lords have not moved and last week the minutes were returned to the commissions for lack of support.
The government is now hoping for the power of a non-institutional referendum that could finally bend the will of opposition parties. People’s sympathy for the armed forces was categorically demonstrated in the Independence Day military parade, when the uniformed men bathed en masse and took photos with the participants in the celebration, lending them their weapons and showing them their combat gear. . Paradoxically, the so-called militarization of Mexico, which had an internal response within the ranks of Morena, ultimately shattered the opposition, traditionally more inclined to maintain army functions.
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