MEXICO CITY (AP) — Tens of thousands of people packed Mexico City’s huge main square on Sunday to protest President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s electoral reforms, which they say threaten democracy and mark a return to the past could.
The square is believed to normally hold close to 100,000 people, but many protesters, unable to fit the square, flocked to nearby streets.
The protesters were mostly dressed in white and pink – the colors of the National Electoral Institute – and shouted slogans like “Don’t Touch my Vote!”. As with a similar but slightly larger march on November 13, protesters appeared to be a little wealthier than at the average demonstration.
López Obrador’s reforms were passed last week. Once enacted, they would cut salaries, funding for local voting offices and training for citizens who run and oversee polling stations. They would also reduce sanctions for candidates who fail to report campaign spending.
Mexico’s president denies the reforms pose a threat to democracy and says the criticism is elitist because the institute is overspending. He says the funds should be spent on the poor.
But protester Enrique Bastien, a 64-year-old veterinarian, said that López Obrador wants the reforms “to go back in time” when “the government controlled the elections”.
“It was life without independence,” Bastien said, recalling the 1970s and 80s when the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) ruled Mexico with fraud and handouts.
Fernando Gutierrez, 55, a small business owner, said López Obrador wants to lead Mexico to a socialist government. “It’s evident from the aid going to Cuba,” Gutierrez said.
López Obrador has imported coronavirus vaccines, medical staff and stone railway ballast from Cuba, but has shown little taste for socialist politics at home.
Many other protesters were simply suspicious of the kind of miscounting, inflated campaign spending, and electoral pressure tactics that were common in Mexico before the independent electoral agency was formed in the 1990s.
López Obrador said Thursday he would sign the amendments to the law, although he expects court challenges. Many at Sunday’s protest expressed hope that Mexico’s Supreme Court would overturn parts of the reform, as courts have done in other presidential initiatives.
Lorenzo Cordova, the head of the National Electoral Institute, said the reforms “aim to relieve the thousands of people who work every day to ensure trustworthy elections, which of course will pose a risk in future elections”.
López Obrador has been casual about court cases, saying on Thursday he believes the reforms will be upheld because none of them are “outside the law”.
However, in the past he has frequently attacked the Mexican judiciary, claiming that judges are part of a conservative conspiracy against his government.
The president’s fierce opposition to the judiciary, regulators and supervisors has raised some fears that he is trying to reintroduce the practices of the old PRI, which bent the rules to hold the Mexican presidency for 70 years until its defeat 2000 elections.
Elections in Mexico are expensive by international standards, in part because almost all legal campaign funding is provided by the government by law. The Electoral Institute also issues the secure voter IDs, which are the most widely accepted form of identification in Mexico, and oversees voting in the country’s remote and often dangerous corners.
López Obrador remains very popular in Mexico, with around 60% approval ratings. Although he cannot stand for re-election, his Morena party is favored in next year’s national elections and the opposition is in disarray.
Part of his popular appeal stems from his railing against highly paid government bureaucrats, and he was angered by the fact that some senior electoral officials are paid more than the president.