Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador attacked the political opposition and criticized marchers that had packed a historic square in the nation’s capital to protest his electoral overhaul, heightening tensions in Latin America’s second-largest economy.
(Bloomberg) — Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador attacked the political opposition and criticized marchers that had packed a historic square in the nation’s capital to protest his electoral overhaul, heightening tensions in Latin America’s second-largest economy.
“Strictly speaking, democracy is not important to them,” AMLO, as the president is known, said at a press briefing on Monday. “Yesterday’s march and the ones that will come have the goal of confronting us, because they don’t want the country to transform. They want to keep stealing.”
Though the 2024 general vote remains far off, the divide between the president’s Morena party and the opposition is becoming heated, and the legislation passed last week struck a chord. Thousands of people gathered in the Zocalo square to support the country’s electoral regulator, known as INE, which stands to have its funding reduced under the new law.
Read More: Mexicans March En Masse Against President’s Electoral Reform
The demonstrations spread to cities across the country, with people carrying signs that said, “Do not touch my vote,” in a follow-up to a march in November that also provoked the president’s ire. Separately, Lorenzo Cordova, the president of INE, said that the body would have to dismiss almost 6,000 people because of the law, newspaper El Economista reported.
AMLO has seen discontent with his government rise — his disapproval rating reached 45% in January, higher than at any other point in his presidency, according to an El Financiero poll. He cannot run for reelection at the end of his six-year term, but public opinion surveys suggest unofficial candidates from his party are the favorites to win.
The law passed by the legislature is a watered-down version of a proposal by the president that would have changed the electoral system more drastically, cutting the number of members of congress and reducing funding for political parties. But Morena did not have enough votes to approve the bill which would have required changing the constitution.
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