Fabiola Martinez
Newspaper La Jornada
Sunday March 5, 2023, p. 7
In five months, the advisers of the National Electoral Institute (INE) must have ready the restructuring of the body to adjust it to the plan B and, as a first result, no later than June (first days) they will define the profile of those who will be in charge of the boards (local and district).
The local (or state) offices will go from five to three members, while in the district offices the reduction will be from five to one and now they will be auxiliary offices, although the councilors warn that there would not even be 300 district instances, but much less.
The guidelines designed by the seven directors who are members of the Technical Committee for the Implementation of the Electoral Reform (the other four conclude their term within a month, that is why they were not included in this work) will serve as the basis to define who stays and who leaves of the structure.
The new INE scheme must be ready and installed on August 15, before the start of the 2023-2024 federal electoral process.
The directors regretted that it is the members themselves who define the survivors
although for now they promised that they will find a way to hurt as little as possible
to the people who make up both the National Electoral Professional Service (SPEN) and the operational branch.
Counselor Ciro Murayama, president of the SPEN commission, said that the main effect of this modification to the decentralized structure of the INE is that the ability to organize elections throughout the territory is lost
.
Even, he added, Joaquín Rubio, Executive member of the INE in the state of Mexico, explained it to the senators when they were received by the Political Coordination Board.
“He told them: ‘hey, I’m working with 40 districts, with 40 (district) boards and in the entire metropolitan area with 28, and they disappear for me, and they leave me an office. It is impossible to make choices like that.’ And in Mexico City there would be an office with one person.”
And it is that in article 61, numeral 4, subsection b, of the new General Law of Electoral Institutions and Procedures (Legipe), it reads: “The permanent auxiliary offices will be installed according to the following rules:
a) In the municipalities or territorial demarcations that contain two or more electoral districts in their scope, there will be an auxiliary office.
b) In metropolitan areas that cover more than one district, there will be an auxiliary office.”
– What will happen to the 300 district offices?
-Well, we would have to cancel the rents and close all of them.
-That will happen?
“Well, yes, because there are no meetings, the meetings disappear,” said the counselor.
In this way, the ABC that directors must follow is to define criteria for the cut.
That is a grievance (because the reform) says that the dismissed themselves have to propose the rules to see who survives. It is an abuse of the legislator; They are going to fire them and, in addition, they make them (the ones who execute). It seems like an exercise, well, let’s say, of malice towards our workers
Murayama noted.
In this context, he stressed that one member out of five will remain in the district, but, be careful, not in the 300
; For example, in Mexico City, which is a metropolitan area, out of 22 offices there will only be one, we are going to go from 22 offices to one, with one worker, she explained.
