Mexico: In advance of significant elections next year, Mexican senators have approved a contentious electoral reform supported by President Mr. Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador.

The Senate voted 72 to 50 in favour of the plan to cut the independent organisation responsible for overseeing elections and its funding. After passing the lower house with a number of amendments, the bill now goes to the president for enactment.

The bill is a scaled-back version of the more radical reforms that Mr. Lopez Obrador had originally proposed, which had sparked large-scale street demonstrations in response to what was seen as an attack on the National Electoral Institute (INE), a crucial organisation responsible for protecting elections from political interference. Even the “Plan B” improvements, according to the polling organisation, had “deficiencies that endanger the workings of the electoral process.” Mr. Lopez Obrador claims that the INE supported fraud during his losing presidential bids in 2006 and 2012 and subsequent victory in 2018.

The President contends that his change will make the electoral process better. In addition to calling for further public demonstrations, the opposition promised to fight the reform in the Supreme Court. It expressed worry that the modifications will help the ruling party, which is preparing for the mid-2024 presidential and legislative elections.

The INE would have been replaced with a new organisation with members chosen by voters instead of lawmakers under Mr. Lopez Obrador’s earlier plan, which failed to gain the backing of at least two-thirds of parliamentarians necessary to modify the constitution.

The number of Senate seats would have decreased from 128 to 96, and the number of representatives in the lower house of Congress would have decreased from 500 to 300. Human Rights Watch, a New York-based advocacy group, had previously issued a warning that the initial proposal would do away with crucial safeguards and “seriously undermine the independence of electoral authorities, putting free and fair elections at danger.”

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