But at the table convened on the topic Integration of municipal councils and mayors of Mexico City, Morena and her allies were left practically alone, since only two legislators from Acción Nacional (PAN) refuted the arguments.
Two deputies from the Citizen Movement, Jorge Álvarez Maynez and Ivonne Ortega, as well as the coordinator of tricolor legislators, Rubén Moreira, also attended but decided not to ask questions or discuss. The Party of the Democratic Revolution was absent.
Mexico is experiencing the worst crisis of violence in its history: 3,000 homicides a month since the six-year term began and the worst inflation in more than 20 years.
And the regime tries to perpetuate itself in power with an electoral reform that threatens the certainty and fairness of the presidential election. pic.twitter.com/447tMWLnm2
– Jorge Álvarez Máynez (@AlvarezMaynez)
July 26, 2022
The parliament is to discuss an “electoral reform that Mexico does not need,” said the emecista Máynez, in the face of the insecurity, health and environmental emergency that the country is experiencing. The intention of the reform that Morena wants is to “perpetuate in power,” he charged.
Councils are useless, says Morena
According to the initiative, of the 2,446 municipalities in the country, 2,088 would be susceptible to reduction in their councils, with savings of 589 billion pesos, without considering “hidden bonuses” that they could be receiving, reported specialist Jaime Miguel Castañeda, coordinator of advisers to Morena at the National Electoral Institute (INE).
The reductions have already been applied in Tabasco, with savings of 171 million 489 pesos this year and in the State of Mexico, with 1,500 million pesos, in this case, by reducing from 1,361 to 954 members of municipal councils, he explained.
Carmen Medel, former federal deputy from Morena and today municipal president of Minatitlán, Veracruz, stated that in her experience, now in government, she has come to the conclusion that the only thing councilors are good for is “to set foot.”
They practically serve no purpose other than to “put their foot down” by rejecting or approving measures to block the mayors, “they feel like deputies” and also have vast perceptions and demand bonds and other resources, he said.
The morenista deputy Alma Delia Navarrete stressed that a sample of the abuses that have occurred at the municipal level is the case of the former mayor of Ecatepec, Agustín Hernández Pastrana, who in 2007 assigned himself a salary of 400 thousand pesos a month.
Juan Carlos Silva Adaya, professor and former electoral magistrate, stated that the issue is one of representativeness, so it is an issue that has to do with governability and plurality, since the councilors and trustees or councilors, where appropriate, are elected by lists, when citizens vote for their municipal presidents and through the proportional representation system, so that there is plurality.
That is why he questioned whether the reduction is the best criterion to save public resources, or if in any case a referendum should be held that takes into account the opinion of the citizens on the reduction of their spaces of representation, and at the same time apply tabulators to set the allowances of these municipal officials.
This is because he recalled that as a magistrate of the Toluca Regional Chamber, he had to analyze many cases in which councilors or trustees claimed non-payment of salaries, but the response of the municipalities is that there was no budget, or they paid allowances or stopped paying salaries of workers, so the problem is the lack of resources.
Attack on federalism
Carolina del Ángel Cruz, counselor of the Electoral Institute of Mexico City (IECDMX), explained that the issue is not only to cut councils, but to guarantee multiculturalism, in some municipalities it deals with issues that have to do with the election of authorities by uses and customs and that must be constitutionally respected.
Deciding from the center how many should be part of the council “does hurt the issue of federalism a bit and perhaps with good intentions it is contributing to the destruction of much that has been built in this country.”
