Fabiola Martínez
La Jornada newspaper
Sunday, September 28, 2025, p. 6
In an unprecedented event, the internal control (OIC) organ of the National Electoral Institute (INE) gave course – and continues – to a procedure against six directors who at the end of 2021 voted in favor of postponing the process of revocation of mandate.
That consultation to citizens was to determine if President Andrés Manuel López Obrador continued in office; The year was finally carried out on April 10, 2022, by order of the Electoral Court of the Judicial Power of the Federation (TEPJF).
The directors Lorenzo Córdova (then president), Ciro Murayama, Roberto Ruiz, Claudia Zavala, Dania Ravel and Jaime Rivera (the last three remain in office) argued that the budget cut determined by the Chamber of Deputies for the year of realization prevented them from organizing the consultation, whose cost – according to their calculations – would be 3,830 million pesos and the legislative Original of the organ more than 4 billion.
They opted for an extension while litigating the issue in the Supreme Court of Justice, but the magistrates ordered the INE to consult; The same directors determined to do it from the installation of a third of the scheduled boxes, while the constitutional controversy due to the budget reduction passed.
Almost four years later, the OIC resumed the issue and notified the six involved the beginning of a procedure by the alleged commission of serious administrative responsibilities – whose sanction goes from warning to disqualification.
The complainant, Sergio Gutiérrez Luna, then a representative of Morena before the INE, gave up the complaint because the matter “was left without matter.” However, the OIC did not stop the investigation and cited for October 8 and 9 to those involved.
Counselor Rivera said in principle that there is no precedent that an IIC, which by law intervenes in administrative matters and is expressly prohibited to intervene in electoral matters, has opened this procedure.
“It is a very poorly precedent because it could become a message of intimidation to the counselors who when issuing their vote, based on criteria and deliberation, feel that the meaning of their decision can be subject to administrative intimidation and worse, criminal,” he told this newspaper. It is an “ominous” act, against the independence of the decisions “according to the law” taken by the members of the General Council of the INE, he said.
He pointed out that they will make the defense that corresponds so that this procedure does not proceed (the prison was filed in the Attorney General’s Office) due to lack of elements.
For now, he confirmed that “there is a notification to appear; they summoned me for October 9”, although the IIC could “take into account” the desitation of Gutiérrez Luna, in which he pointed out that his complaint “no longer has current effects nor is it a current or interesting topic.”
However, this position did not cause the interruption of the procedure, although according to sources consulted, after those involved have indicated in different spaces that it is a “threat” not only to the people but the collegiate, the OIC eventually could dismiss the file.
