Likening Sunday’s protest in Mexico City to a “political strip” by his opponents, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador reiterated his claims that his proposal to cut the budget of the National Electoral Institute (INE) and change the way of selection of the board would strengthen democracy rather than weaken it as critics have argued.
“They did it in favor of corruption, in favor of racism, classism, discrimination,” López Obrador said at a regular press conference.
The president, who spent part of the briefing questioning the Democratic credentials of prominent marchers, estimated that between 50,000 and 60,000 people attended.
Organizers said hundreds of thousands attended the march, which was one of the largest demonstrations against Lopez Obrador’s policies since the leftist took office four years ago.
López Obrador has long criticized the country’s electoral authorities, including accusing them of helping engineer his defeats when he ran for president in 2006 and 2012.
The reform is necessary to protect Mexico’s elections from fraud, he said, describing the criticism as “baseless.”
The president argues that his plan will make INE more democratic by allowing the public to vote on its board.
However, the plan calls for nominations for the board from the legislative, judicial and executive branches, which critics see as a power grab by the president because of his influence over those bodies.
MORENA’s ruling party lacks the two-thirds majority in Congress required to reform the INE constitution.
But some analysts say he could find the votes with the support of lawmakers from the opposition Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), a party that has ruled Mexico for decades and that López Obrador has long attacked as corrupt.
