Despite the response, Acosta said: “We will be there.” He defended the demonstration as peaceful and legal “to oppose the abusive overrepresentation.”
Thus, after mobilizing in 2022, 2023 and before the elections in 2024, after the process the Pink Tide will once again take to the streets but in adverse conditions, since the INE is located on a primary vehicular traffic route, the Periférico, and it will be on the side and a small green area in front of it that the protesters will have to concentrate to avoid risks, since it is in the middle of expressways.
The FCN, which brings together dozens of social and civil organizations, protagonists of the Pink Tide, which defended the INE from the so-called Plan B, proposals for presidential electoral reform to reduce its structure and resources in the name of austerity, called for the mobilization on Sunday to oppose the electoral councilors giving Morena and its allies an “over-representation” in the Chamber of Deputies, a decision they are about to make as soon as pending challenges against the electoral results for deputies and senators are resolved.
Morena and its allied parties, the Labor Party (PT) and the Green Party (PVEM), claim that they are entitled to 373 deputies, that is, 74.6% of the Chamber of Deputies, although they achieved 54.7% of the vote for federal deputies.
This is because – they argue – they won in 256 districts, and the distribution criteria are in the law and the INE agreement on how it would proceed to assign 200 plurinominal deputies.
There is opposition from the Pink Tide and the opposition, as this would leave the opposition as a whole, which gathered almost 40% of the votes in the election for deputies, with less than 25% of the Chamber.
Second refusal
The refusal to provide facilities is added to the refusal of the INE to lend its auditorium for the holding of two forums in which the issue of overrepresentation would be discussed, on July 31 and August 7, in which the former presidents of the Institute, Lorenzo Córdova, José Woldenberg and Leonardo Valdés, would participate.
At the beginning of July, the FCN requested the building and the INE had given its authorization, but on the 22nd it retracted its request and notified the conveners that it would carry out “unpostponable” works, so that “preparations are in place to begin the work of comprehensive review and repair of the auditorium starting next week and during the month of August.”
“Risks due to possible short circuits have been detected and preventive and corrective maintenance is also required for the air conditioning network in order to avoid the generation of fungi and spores, and eliminate the risk of spreading bad odors, bacteria and viruses such as Covid,” reported the head of the office of the Executive Secretary of the INE, Claudia Edith Suárez Ojeda.
On this occasion, access to the INE esplanade was requested for the rally and Suárez Ojeda explained to Acosta Naranjo that “his request does not fit within some of the assumptions contained in the current regulatory framework.”
He also recalled that the Institute’s facilities are exclusively for the purposes established in the law and that the “Guidelines for action in the event of a gathering, demonstration or incursion into the central offices of the INE” will apply.
These order that the Civil Protection personnel of the INE must “reinforce access control in the buildings, not allowing the entry or exit of any person.”
In response, Acosta said that “the esplanade has already been used for public events” and despite the refusal to use the esplanade, he said: “we will be there.”
