On October 30, the legal term of 4 counselors of the Federal Electoral Institute (IFE), including its Chairman, will come to an end. If there is no agreement in the Chamber of Deputies for the renewal of these posts, the Institute is running the risk of having to function without five of its nine counselors, given that the position that Sergio García Ramírez occupied is now vacant. In addition, IFE is in between a particular juncture due to the proposal of centralizing all local electoral apparatus into one National Election Institute (INE). Thereby, even if there was a call for the missing counselors, its future might prove to be uncertain. What would this potential IFE demise imply?
Although it is not election time, having an incomplete IFE over the next weeks would prevent solving issues regarding the process of district allocation that, as established by the law, ought to be made according to the figures provided by the 2010 census. Nevertheless, political parties are usually not in a hurry when it comes to addressing vacancies at IFE, which exhibits one of the scourges of Mexico’s political system, more keen on perpetuating disputes between parties and the questionable fees in candidacies than respecting institutions, which in this case happen to be electoral ones. This has already occurred before the 2012 elections, when IFE was missing three of its counselors for approximately a year. Nowadays, incentives are even lesser given the context of the increasingly likely hatching of INE. Theoretically, the need for integrating IFE is ineluctable, but federal Deputies have been careless. Not even the urges made by the Electoral Tribunal of the Judiciary Power (TEPJF), which encourage them to comply with dispositions issued in the Constitution and the Electoral Code, have proved to be effective. In the end, this behavior is the grim reality of how political parties treat IFE like it was their property and not of the population.
Conceding the increasing possibility that IFE will end up being eliminated in favor of INE, it is important to highlight how this change might create a cure that is worse than the disease. PAN, who will emerge as INE’s intellectual author via its proposal of political reform (in exchange of the party’s vote in favor of the energy reform) seems to be confusing the known relevance of having a more trustworthy electoral apparatus with the need for using dualism of the centralism vs. federalism formula. And not just that: PAN is striking a blow to its municipal and federalist essence with a proposal like INE. The now opposition must not forget that the construction of the electoral apparatus, conformed by IFE and local institutions, was a key part of Mexico’s alternation of power. The winding path that PAN had to go through and which led them twice towards the Presidency began with municipal presidencies, that is to say, the party started from the local level. In the face of a hypothetical return of PAN to the Executive Power, it appears that going through the opposite way is a difficult way to succeed.
It is true that electoral institutions need improvements to strengthen the institutional autonomy and enhance their capacity for organizing, registration, monitoring and control. However, centralizing is not a panacea and it worries that, a weak federalist scheme in most of sectors (taxes, security, and political institutions) but still a key part in the slow process of building a democracy in Mexico, centralization is turning into a tendency and not just from the government but also from the opposition. If centralizing is the better solution, why not, in light of the malfunctioning of most of the local institutions – state congress, tribunals, Attorney’s Offices – is the federal model not abandoned for a formal centralism? Mexico would not be unfamiliar with all of this. Nor would their possible consequences be unknown.
CIDAC
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