Mexico City (EFE).- Thousands of citizens and nearly 80 organizations filled the Zócalo plate in Mexico City to ask the Supreme Court ministers to back down the controversial “Plan B” electoral reform of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, to which they accuse of jeopardizing the autonomy and reliability of the elections leading up to the 2024 presidential elections.
People, including minors and the elderly, were arriving at the Plaza de la Constitución, the country’s main public square, from 9:00 am (3:00 pm GMT) and left at the stroke of noon (6:00 pm GMT).
According to the organizers of the mass rally, not only the capital’s Zócalo was filled, but also the streets around it, with at least half a million Mexicans demanding to back down the controversial “Plan B” that they claim is intended to “render” the National Institute. Electoral (INE), with a reduction in human and budgetary resources.
In front of the National Palace and the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation (SCJN) the citizens, dressed in pink and white, shouted in unison “my vote is not touched”, “the Court has a mission, to respect the constitution”.
Against “plan B”
This is the second movement that has been carried out in the capital and the country against the modifications to the electoral laws proposed by President López Obrador since last December, after Congress rejected his controversial electoral reform with which he proposed the creation of the National Institute of Elections and Consultations (INEC) to replace the current INE, among other things.
Among the participants, the retired minister of the SCJN, José Ramón Cossío, confided that the current ministers of the Mexican Supreme Court will stop the so-called “plan B” as they consider it unconstitutional, although he acknowledged that they have received pressure from the National Palace itself.
“So far the ministers have only listened to the offensive words of the president and his supporters. Those of us who are here want to speak to you with another language, with the language of trust and respect that corresponds to the democrats. We want to tell them that we are aware of the difficulties that their work implies, of the pressures to which they are being subjected, by those who want to appropriate the Mexican electoral system”, he emphasized.
He said that President López Obrador, who has denied that there are risks to the organization of the 2024 presidential elections, has maintained that the ministers will be corrupt if they reject these modifications to the electoral laws from entering into force.
In this sense, Cossío assured that the ministers will consider that “it has a serious potential” to affect electoral regulations, that it reduces human and budgetary resources against the autonomy of the INE, and that “unfortunately women’s rights have diminished.”
And above all, he warned that a message would be sent that a person can assume that, in his government project, he can do and impose whatever he wants regardless of what the public thinks.
Demonstrations in the Zócalo of Mexico City
On her occasion, the journalist and member of the opposition bloc Va por México, Beatriz Pagés, stated that this movement to defend the INE is ready to “stand up to the enemies of the Constitution.”
He pointed out that on this day a front is being created to win the 2024 presidential elections and asked the ministers of the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation (SCJN) to “send to the dump” the so-called electoral “plan B” of López Obrador.
Leaders of opposition political parties such as Marko Cortés, president of the conservative National Action Party (PAN); Jesús Zambrano, from the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD); Alejandro Moreno, from the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), as well as the president of the Chamber of Deputies, Santiago Creel.
Likewise, public personalities such as the businessman and promoter of the concentration Claudio X. González; the writer and activist Javier Sicilia, who said he came to defend democracy; the former Mexican foreign minister and candidate for the presidency Ángel Gurría, the former PAN militant and lawyer Javier Lozano, among others.
At the end of the event, the Mexican national anthem was sung, although there was no flag flying on the mast of the capital’s Zócalo, after this Sunday the soldiers did not raise the national symbol like any other day.
