Mexico Elections - 2021
Mexico is a multiparty federal republic with an elected president and bicameral legislature. Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador of the National Regeneration Movement won the presidential election in July 2018 in generally free and fair multiparty elections and took office in December 2018. Citizens also elected members of the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies, governors, state legislators, and mayors.
The midterm elections on Sunday 06 June 2021 had the chance of shifting the political landscape in the country for the foreseeable future. But this election cycle had been fraught with violence, with 35 candidates having been killed by organized crime gangs so far. Polls showed Morena with over 40% of voter preference for the lower house, which may signal the “4th transformation” that President Andrés Manuel López Obrador had talked about. Andrés Manuel López Obrador (known popularly by the initials AMLO) is the first left-wing president Mexico has had in roughly 40 years. A former mayor of the capital Mexico City, López Obrador has been a major progressive force in politics for many years, and won the 2018 presidential election in a landslide.
AMLO is not a revolutionary socialist like, say, Fidel Castro or Hugo Chávez; rather he is a progressive nationalist and social democrat. But in his presidential campaign, and since entering office, López Obrador has made opposition to neoliberalism a key political goal. He pledged to "end the dark night of neoliberalism", and to accomplish this, AMLO declared the creation of a new revolutionary movement he calls the Fourth Transformation.
Leaked documents released by the López Obrador government show that there is in fact an alliance of these powerful oligarchic forces to try to overthrow AMLO. This group, which calls itself the Broad Opposition Bloc (Bloque Opositor Amplio, or BOA), consists of some of the aforementioned right-wing leaders, the PRI and the PAN, and powerful business leaders in Mexico. They also claim to have the support of most of the press, including the top media outlets in the country. BOA says in the executive summary of its strategy that it has backers on Wall Street, in Washington, and at foreign media outlets. BOA was trying to take control of Mexico's Chamber of Deputies in the 2021 legislative elections, and impeaching AMLO before his term ends in 2024.
Another name worth mentioning is an opposition group that is much more extreme in its tactics, and much more explicitly anti-democratic. It calls itself the National Anti-AMLO Front (Frente Nacional Anti-AMLO, or FRENA), and FRENA is apparently part of the BOA, but represents the radical right wing of the alliance. FRENA is, according to any consistent definition of the term, far-right. It spreads outlandish conspiracies claiming that López Obrador is a "communist dictator" (he is neither of the two), and that his Morena party is using dastardly policies like education equality, feminism, and LGBT rights to try to turn the country into a big gay atheist dystopia.
Significant human rights issues included reports of the involvement by police, military, and other government officials and illegal armed groups in unlawful or arbitrary killings, forced disappearance, and torture; harsh and life-threatening prison conditions in some prisons; impunity for violence against human rights defenders and journalists; violence targeting persons with disabilities and lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and intersex persons. Impunity for human rights abuses remained a problem, with extremely low rates of prosecution for all crimes. The government’s federal statistics agency (INEGI) estimated 94 percent of crimes were either unreported or not investigated.
The law provides for freedom of expression, including for the press, and the government generally respected this right. Most newspapers, television stations, and radio stations were privately owned. The government had minimal presence in the ownership of news media but remained a significant source of advertising revenue for many media organizations, which at times influenced coverage. Media monopolies, especially in small markets, could constrain freedom of expression. Human rights groups reported some state and local governments censored the media. Journalists reported altering their coverage due to a lack of protection from the government, attacks against members of the media and newsrooms, and threats or retributions against their families, among other reasons.
Organized criminal groups exercised a grave and increasing influence over media outlets and reporters, threatening individuals who published critical views of crime groups. Concerns persisted about the use of physical violence by organized criminal groups in retaliation for information posted online, which exposed journalists, bloggers, and social media users to the same level of violence faced by traditional journalists.
In April 2021, the U.S.-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) rights group went so far as to publish a “journalists safety kit” just for the Mexico elections, citing harassment, online bullying and assassination. Five journalists were killed in 2020; one was shot and killed in May, and another survived a knife attack. Mexico emerged as one of the world’s most dangerous countries for journalists, along with Syria, in 2019 and has remained among the least safe countries to report in ever since. CPJ counts 15 missing journalists since 2006 and at least 10 slain journalists in the past three years. “In Mexico, journalists, especially those who cover crime, corruption, abuses of power by the authorities and drug trafficking, tend to be extremely vulnerable to [threatening] texts specifically from criminal gangs, but also from politicians who may be involved with those criminal gangs,” Jan-Albert Hootsen, the Mexico representative at the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). said. “And this is a phenomenon that we see across the country.”
The risk of violence is pervasive across Mexico. Seldom is anyone held accountable. “The impunity rate in crimes against the press is above 90%, meaning that less than 10% of the people who commit crimes against the press are actually arrested and convicted,” said Hootsen. “With an impunity rating this high, it means that anyone who wants to hurt a journalist, who wants to commit one of those crimes, has a very powerful incentive.” Given the gang violence and government corruption in Mexico, journalists often don’t know where threats are coming from. That makes it hard to take precautions.
In May 2019, Congress unanimously approved a constitutional reform on gender parity that establishes a requirement to observe parity in the designation of public officials at every level (federal, state, local) in all three branches of government. A majority of state legislatures approved the reform on June 4, and it came into force on June 7. The reform states the principle of gender parity should be observed in the designation of cabinet members, selection of candidates for public office by every political party, and designation of members of the judiciary. In accordance with the reform, the Senate elected Monica Fernandez president of the Senate for a year during the legislative session beginning September 1. She became the fourth woman to preside over the Senate and the first since 1999.
In October 2020 the Electoral Tribunal granted registration to three new political parties: Solitary Encounter Party, Progressive Social Networks, and Social Force for Mexico. The same tribunal rejected registration challenges from four other parties, including former president Felipe Calderon’s Free Mexico Party, which the National Electoral Institute argued did not produce sufficient evidence of the origin of certain funding it received. Authorities declared 10 political parties eligible to participate in the 2021 midterm elections.
On Sunday 06 June 2021, over 95 million Mexicans were called to head to the poll in elections to select new federal and local authorities. The electoral process has been surrounded by accusations among parties and candidates who denounce high levels of electoral violence. "Unfortunately, organized crime groups' violence represents the greatest risk to governability and the electoral process," Interior Secretary Olga Sanchez acknowledged. Political analyst Martha Singer also sustains that confrontations between the opposition and the Federal Government have marked 2021 subnational elections.
In Mexico City, the Office of the Attorney General reported 251 complaints about electoral crimes connected to gender-based political violence, vote-buying, and misuse of public goods ahead of the June 6 elections. "We will not be complacent, nor will we ignore the buying of votes or the coercion of citizens... We are prepared to put an end to impunity in electoral crimes committed in this city," General Prosecutor Ernestina Godoy said. Electoral authorities installed 7,465 polling stations and 24 district boards in Mexico City where 18,856 police officers would monitor Sunday's elections. Godoy explained that her office and the investigative police will deploy fiscal mobile units and police patrols to respond to electoral fraud denunciations and violence.
The Office of the Attorney General conceived an election security plan focused on the prevention of electoral crimes, and the attention to citizens, political actors, and other authorities. Godoy urged also the civil society group "Electoral Self-Defense Group Mastines" to not disturb the order, intimidate or obstruct the free exercise of suffrage. Her statements come after Mexico City's Electoral Institute sanction the leader of this group for prompting violence on citizens who might be confused or related to the commission of some alleged electoral crime. According to the consulting firm Ettelekt, 88 politicians have been murdered since the start of the electoral process in September 2020.
Besides the 500 seats of the National Lower Chamber, electors will vote for representatives in 30 subnational congresses, 15 governorships, and 900 city councils and municipal boards. National Electoral Institute (INE) noted that 21,383,000 posts are at stake. The incumbent governor will be renewed in the states of Baja California, Baja California Sur, Campeche, Chihuahua, Colima, Guerrero, Michoacan, Nayarit, Nuevo Leon, Queretaro, San Luis Potosi, Sinaloa, Sonora, Tlaxcala, and Zacatecas. While local legislatures will be renewed in Durango and Hidalgo, citizens will elect mayors, city attorneys, and councilors in Coahuila and Quintana Roo. In total, more than 20,000 state-level positions will be up for election on June 6.
INE plans to set up 162,815 polling stations where COVID-19 health measures must be observed. Likewise, 1,463,000 citizens will be in charge of vote reception and counting with the assistance of over 50,000 electoral supervisors. The June 6 elections were monitored by almost 3 million representatives from political parties. At least 559 international observers had also been accredited. The first electoral results would be released on Sunday night through the Preliminary Electoral Results Program managed by INE.
Analysts agreed that political tensions are focused on achieving the majority in the Lower Chamber, which is currently held by the ruling National Renovation Movement (Morena) party. The closing oraculus_mx poll of polls projects these results for the Lower House ahead of #Mexico's midterm elections on Sunday:
- 312 seats = MORENA & allies
- 170 seats = Va por México (PRI-PAN-PRD)
- 16 seats = Movimiento Ciudadano
The Buendía&Marquez poll for ElUniversal:
- 41%(-3%) = Morena (centre-left)
- 16%(-) = PAN (centre-right)
- 15%(+2%) = PRI (centre)
- 8%(+3%) = MC (centre-left)
Although electoral campaigns officially conclude on June 2, candidates for local and federal posts held massive rallies, concerts, and popular dances to call the population to attend the polls. In Mexico City, people dressed in white participated in the "Save Mexico" march, which was led by opposition candidates Margarita Zavala and Miguel Hidalgo. Ruling Morena party contester Alfredo Martinez held his closing campaign in Morelia in Michoacan State, where he was supported by his party's president Mario Delgado.
In compliance with current federal law, on 03 June 2021 the National Electoral Institute (INE) requested candidates, parties, citizens, public officials, and the media not to carry out propaganda actions, publish results of polls on electoral preferences, or disseminate reports on the work of subnational governments.
Mexico's President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (AMLO) called on citizens to participate in the elections. His message comes amid a violent environment in which one candidate has been killed and two political attacks have been registered in the last week. Since Sep. 2020, however, 89 candidates have been killed, according to Etellekt.
President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s party and its allies appeared poised to maintain their majority in Mexico’s lower chamber of the congress, according to initial results. Electoral authorities released “quick count” results based on voting samples that allow estimates of the voting trends to determine the rough potential makeup of the Chamber of Deputies late Sunday 06 June 2021.
López Obrador’s Morena party will have to rely on votes from its allies in the Workers Party and Green Party, but together they were expected to capture between 265 and 292 seats in the 500-seat chamber. Morena alone was expected to win 190 to 203 seats. That would signal a significant decline for the president’s party. In the current congress, Morena has a simple majority, holding 253 seats on its own. It would also deprive the president of a qualified majority of two-thirds required to approve constitutional reforms.
The opposition alliance made up of the Institutional Revolutionary Party, National Action Party and Party of the Democratic Revolution were estimated to win between 181 and 213 seats. Those would be gains for those parties, which have often appeared rudderless in the face of López Obrador’s popularity.
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