Lilian Hernandez Osorio
La Jornada Newspaper
Tuesday, January 7, 2025, p. 6
For the organization of debates and information forums for candidates for ministers, magistrates and judges, the National Electoral Institute (INE) will have 48 percent less than the budget it had requested.
Of the 26 million 673 thousand pesos that it planned to use in these debates, it will only have 13 million 853 thousand, which represents 12 million 820 thousand pesos less than projected.
As if that were not enough, it will have zero pesos for the Support Fund for Electoral Observation and it will not have resources to update equipment for disseminating institutional activities, so there will be the risk of the signal being lost or going down, as It happened in the last electoral process during the second presidential debate, in which there was no transmission for more than 15 minutes.
As part of the cut to this year’s budget, approved last Tuesday in the extraordinary session of the General Council, the institute determined to remove more than 5 million planned for information monitoring in print, electronic media and social networks; so now you will not have this tool to view what is being published about the institute and electoral activity in the country.
According to the breakdown of adjustments to the budget for this fiscal year, the electoral body will also not have what was calculated for the installation of the 2025 macro press room and media fair for the election to positions in the Judiciary.
From 17 million 199 thousand 805 pesos that it had planned to use, the budget dropped to only 4 million 968 thousand pesos, equivalent to a reduction of 71.1 percent; had to remove 12 million 231 thousand pesos, so the deployment to offer spaces to the media and installation of the press room for reporters who cover this unprecedented process in the country will be austere compared to the political-electoral process past.
The monitoring and coverage of the extraordinary electoral process of the Judiciary will have the same impact, since of the 19 million 470 thousand pesos proposed in the preliminary project, there will only be 15 million 395 thousand; that is, 4 million 075 thousand pesos less.
In the reductions to the Coordination of Social Communication, the item destined for activities to inform Mexicans residing abroad about their political-electoral rights, as well as the promotion of institutional messages of the electoral process for judges, was also affected, remaining at 4 million 968 thousand pesos, almost half of the 8 million 480 thousand that had been budgeted.
