INE prepares plans to elect judges, ministers and magistrates

Lilian Hernandez and Fabiola Martinez

The newspaper La Jornada
Thursday, September 12, 2024, p. 5

The National Electoral Institute (INE) has begun preparations for the unprecedented election of judges and although it still needs to be approved by at least 17 local congresses, the electoral body is already studying the route and possible scenarios for this electoral process of judges, magistrates and ministers scheduled for June 2025.

The president of the council, Guadalupe Taddei Zavala, reported that they have to start to see with the technical areas what is required and how it could be carried out, since once approved and published in the Official Journal of the Federation (DOF), the institute has to begin the electoral process next week.

According to the opinion approved early yesterday morning, The preparation stage for the extraordinary election of 2025 will begin with the first session that the General Council of the INE holds within seven days after the entry into force of this decree.

The president of the council stated that the INE cannot say that it is not ready, since it is a constitutional mandate, “so we will find the routes and as soon as this is moving forward, our obligation will be to make each moment of the process transparent. It doesn’t matter whether the counselors agree or not.pointed out The Daysince it is a constitutional mandate and although there are many doubts about how this election will be applied and there is a lack of clarity in the electoral process, we have to do it.

He pointed out that they must be cautious and the INE will have to be ready for this and “have the technical part of all the areas that They are highly specialized to see how we are going to gohe noted.

Last Monday, Taddei Zavala said in an interview with this newspaper that the INE will not only have to see how to implement the reform in the terms in which it is finally established, but it also has to understand that a third part is being incorporated into the national election system: At the institute we know about the election of the Executive and Legislative powers, today we will have to put together this whole election of the Judicial.

In light of this new challenge, he warned that until now there has been no talk of the reform including the drafting of a secondary law detailing the procedures for carrying out this election, so he considered that the INE will have to do so through agreements to determine the steps to follow.

The institute, he said, has to work not with what is imminent (a reform) but with what already exists, so it plans to work together with the Chamber of Deputies and with whoever is determined to have to act as the link or channel to carry out this process.

For his part, the magistrate of the Electoral Tribunal of the Judicial Branch of the Federation (TEPJF), Reyes Rodríguez Mondragón, considered that the judicial reform is contradictory because the electoral authorities must have a condition of total impartiality, since it resolves conflicts between political parties, then There is a contradiction that its members be elected by popular vote.

He pointed out that it is not in accordance with the conditions that the Constitution must provide for having appointments and exercising their functions with independence and impartiality and We have seen that the effects in other countries are negative..

He considered that this reform was done in a hurry, without having a secondary law and without analyzing step by step how it will be carried out and although this modification will allow him to stay in the upper chamber until 2027, he assured that he does not agree with how it was done.