Córdova calls to stop “attacks” on electoral bodies in the world

Fabiola Martinez

Newspaper La Jornada
Friday, September 23, 2022, p. eleven

There is vast evidence of efforts to violate the autonomy of electoral bodiesasserted the president counselor of the National Electoral Institute (INE), Lorenzo Córdova.

At the closing of the Global Summit on Electoral Democracy, Córdova also referred to the urgency of building alliances to defend and stop the deterioration of electoral integrity, the harassment of the authorities in charge of organizing the elections and stop the use of polarization as a political strategy.

In his closing message, he stated that although some of the questioning of democracy is justified, due to its difficulty in responding to the great structural problems of our timethese can only be resolved in accordance with the rules of the democratic game.

He argued that conditions such as poverty and insecurity have contributed to the loss of trust in institutions, but they are also a breeding ground for the emergence of what he called political leadership with strong authoritarian impulses.

He pointed out that there are trends towards the concentration of power, the reduction of civic spaces and an increase in the harassment of freedom of expression.

The President of the INE highlighted that in all regions of the world the importance of the independence of electoral bodies has been considered as an axis to strengthen the democratic order.

autocratic regimes

The 17 institutions participating in the summit –several linked to the Organization of American States–, including the INE, intend to defend democracybecause as one of the speakers, Corinne Momal-Vanian, director of the Kofi Annan Foundation, pointed out, 70 percent of the world’s population now living under some autocratic regimeaccording to the most recent report from the Institute of the University of Gothenburg, in Sweden, according to which the level of democracy in 2021 was equivalent to that of 1989.

Is regression 30 years old even in democracies It is explained, in part, because the institutions have not responded to the needs of citizens and the young population is disillusioned with democracy and its processes.