Life and death of the independent electoral arbiter

Thirty years ago, on October 31, 1996, the first autonomous General Council of the then Federal Electoral Institute (IFE), now INE, was installed.

Thus began a stage of institutional flourishing and democratic advancement of which only ashes remain. Let's look at the story in five capsules.

First: the background. To get out of the political crisis of 1988, when the government controlled the elections, the construction of a permanent professional arbitrator began, whose first task was to build a reliable census from scratch.

In 1994, political violence darkened the country. It was necessary for the government and the opposition to agree on a reform to inject certainty into the elections: the figure of citizen councillors appointed by consensus is created - but the contest is asymmetrical.

In 1996, constitutional rules for fair competition were agreed, giving autonomy to the IFE and creating an electoral tribunal attached to the Judiciary to resolve disputes.

The government is excluded from any electoral function.

Second: attributes. The general council of the IFE is appointed by consensus of all parties.

It is made up of people with respectable backgrounds, worthy of the trust of opposing political forces.

The new institution always works in a collegiate manner, there are no one-person decisions. In addition, a solid professional career system is consolidated.

Third: achievements. In the first election organized by the autonomous IFE, in 1997, the PRI lost control of the Chamber of Deputies and the left won its first entity, the Federal District, with Cárdenas.

In 2000, the first alternation in the presidency in seventy years took place and no party controlled Congress. There is a division of powers. Mexico confirms that it is a democracy.

The IFE exercises its autonomy and sanctions the illegal financing schemes of Pemexgate and Amigos de Fox.

Mexico's electoral system is an international benchmark. The IFE is invited to collaborate in elections in South Africa after apartheid, in Peru after Fujimori, in Iraq after Hussein.

Years later, the autonomous INE was appointed the only electoral technical consultation body of the Venice Commission, attached to the European Commission.

In 2014, the IFE becomes the INE, which is given more powers. Mexico continues to have genuine elections.

Fourth: the attack. As of 2018, the López Obrador government decides to undermine the autonomy of the INE. In 2006 he had invented a fraud against him that two decades later fails to prove.

(Parenthesis: Engineer Cárdenas denounced fraud in the rigged 1988 election, and as a Democrat he complied with the adverse verdict of the polls in 1994 and 2000.)

Until April 2023, the INE has a majority of directors who defend autonomy. A Congress without a qualified majority and an independent Supreme Court stop the attacks on the autonomous arbitrator.

In the autonomous IFE and INE, due to ethical conviction and political necessity, the scrupulous management of public resources was mandatory. Only in this way was it possible to exercise autonomy and dare to be uncomfortable with the government and powerful political parties.

Without administrative neatness it would not have been possible to face the anger of López Obrador and Morena, for example.

Fifth: the consummation of the crime. It has been clearly documented how in 2023 Morena imposed stalwarts on the INE, who in 2024 gave him overrepresentation.

Afterwards, collegiate life was annihilated and the presidency of the INE was given a broad letter to appoint officials and make opaque administrative decisions.

The independent arbitrator did not die of natural causes. It was a crime announced and executed in broad daylight.

Colophon: the independent arbitrator was a collective construction in which governments of different sign, parties, social organizations, academics participated. In short, it was a plural achievement of Mexican society.

Instead, the destruction of the autonomous INE was unilateral, perpetrated by the operators of the previous and current government.

The exercise of power through authoritarianism and sectarianism squandered the valuable construction of a reliable electoral system in Mexico.

And that same power is the one that intends to dictate the way out of the painful spectacle that they have forged, again excluding the oppositions, the academy, civil society.

It is the other way around: only a democratic operation can begin to restore democracy.