▲ The Secretary of the Interior, Rosa Icela Rodríguez (right), talks with Ernestina Godoy, legal advisor to the Executive.Photo Luis Castillo
Enrique Mendez
La Jornada Newspaper
Tuesday, October 21, 2025, p. 4
The Presidential Commission for Electoral Reform told deputies that it is not in the government’s interest to control the electoral bodies or organize the elections. “It is very clear to us that we must take steps forward and not backward,” said the head of the Ministry of the Interior (SG), Rosa Icela Rodríguez, in a meeting to which the president of the chamber, Kenia López Rabadán (PAN), was not invited.
Furthermore, the head of that Commission, Pablo Gómez Álvarez, specified that “the President (Claudia Sheinbaum) does not want her party to control the electoral bodies. We repudiated that before, we fought against it… in the hearings everyone agrees that we should not return to the past.”
The retired minister Arturo Zaldívar did not attend the meeting and only deputies from Morena and two from the PAN participated, since not only the members of the PRI in the commission, but also the four from the PT and the PVEM, allies of Morena, made a void. In the end, the coordinators of both political forces, Reginaldo Sandoval Flores and Carlos Puente Salas, respectively, arrived and did not intervene.
They ask that the initiative be sent in December
At the conclusion of the dialogue, the coordinator of Morena, Ricardo Monreal Ávila, considered it desirable that the presidential commission “speed up to December” the sending of the initiative to Congress.
In an interview, he explained that if the intention is to apply the changes to the Constitution in the 2027 electoral process, the chamber could analyze and approve the initiative between January and March of next year. “The times are very tight and the most correct thing is for the camera to do its work early,” he added.
Pablo Gómez Álvarez pointed out that constitutional changes in electoral matters in the past were negotiated by the parties that are now in the opposition.
What it is about now, he explained, is to overcome “all the errors that affected Mexican democracy so much” and he proposed that all political forces unite in a national purpose and maintain a plan of searching for coincidences and debating divergences.
“Isn’t that the democratic debate, the debate facing the nation? That is our proposal. We do not want the subordination of absolutely anyone, because we have not even defined what the content of the initiative would be.
“Later we will see what reform Congress votes on,” he said.
Rosa Icela Rodríguez insisted that there is no initiative, but she anticipated some points addressed in the consultations, such as the origin of campaign resources; the vote of Mexicans abroad; the austerity, effectiveness and efficiency of the electoral bodies, and the immunity of the deputies and senators.
The vice coordinator of the PAN, Noemí Luna, stated that her party “will defend the integrity of the institutions and the independence of Congress, as well as the right of citizens to have fair electoral rules, the product of consensus and not of whims.”
He reproached López Rabadán for not being invited, and both the president of the commission, Víctor Hugo Lobo, and Monreal offered an apology. “He was surprised not to receive the invitation; he would have attended, he has behaved institutionally,” Monreal said.
