Mexico City.– In the Permanent Commission, Morena and its allies exchanged arguments and reproaches about overrepresentation with opposition legislators.
The issue was the possibility that the Morena coalition could obtain more than 334 seats to change the Constitution, if the distribution of plurinominals is added.
Morena argued that it is possible, since the Constitution prohibits a qualified majority by party, but not through the addition of legislators from various political forces. Meanwhile, PAN, PRI, MC and the PRD pointed out that Morena sought to bypass it with coalitions only in some states and the loan of candidates, and that in this way, they pointed out, a model prior to the reforms that prevented a block from having a qualified majority will be returned to.
“Indeed, we are talking about a new regime, a regime that we could even call hegemonic, but the change is that this hegemonic regime is now in the hands of the people of Mexico,” accepted PVEM Senator Israel Zamora.
Juan Ramiro Robledo, a Morena deputy, said that the opposition is trying to prevent the Constitution from being read literally so that Morena, PVEM and the PT do not have a qualified majority in the Chamber of Deputies.
The opposition responded that this was what Andrés Manuel López Obrador argued in the Quintana Roo Congress in 1998 and that former minister Olga Sánchez Cordero – now a Morena senator – agreed with him.
“Nothing forces the PVEM and the PT to vote for everything Morena proposes if in the hypothetical case, impossible in reality, that Morena or the Green Party proposed some provision against the workers,” said Robledo.
“We will have to convince them, just as we want to convince the opposition to vote with us on this reform of the judiciary,” said Leonel Godoy, deputy coordinator of Morena deputies.
Throughout the debate, Morena assured that this has been done in the past, so the opposition responded that it was an acceptance that they now want to impose what they previously denounced.
“You have repeatedly said in this forum that we are not equal. I have endured that expression with stoicism. Show that we are not equal. This is an opportunity to show that you do not want to reproduce the worst practices,” responded the PRI member Beatriz Paredes.
Ultimately, added the former PRI president, what will be decided is whether there will be a return to a hegemonic regime where Congress is subordinate to the Executive Branch, since it was López Obrador who proposed a Plan C to also win the second minorities in the states and seize the qualified majority.
“You (Morena and its allies) are saying ‘before you did it wrong, now we are going to do it worse, why not?'” argued PRD deputy Eda Gisel Díaz.
Gisel Díaz recalled that in 1998, in response to an action of unconstitutionality presented by the current president, the Court considered that Article 54 of the Constitution, which considers the distribution of pluris by party and not by coalition, should not be interpreted in isolation, but rather it considered that it should be understood according to the purposes of avoiding qualified majorities and ensuring that political pluralism prevails. She even cited the current Morena member Pablo Gómez, who in 2015 denounced artificial majorities with a similar argument.
“Those who complained about the past are now carrying out the same fraudulent maneuvers to obtain more power that they already have. Today they are here, but tomorrow they will not be here. Morena and its allies have become the mafia of power that they claimed to fight,” added MC deputy Carlos Alberto León.
One response came from PT member Benjamín Robles: “If you couldn’t win at the polls, hold on, the people decided.”
To the accusations that López Obrador campaigned for Morena, he replied that Vicente Fox also did so in 2006 and then called the opposition “ignorant” and suffering from “political schizophrenia.”
“These are rules that were created by those who come to complain today,” exclaimed Morena senator Reyes Flores Hurtado.
The opposition rejected the idea that with 45 percent of the votes received at the polls on June 2, the Morena coalition could have 75 percent of the deputies, and that the Constitution sets a maximum of 8 percent for overrepresentation. Morena, PVEM and PT insisted that this was the mandate of the electorate and that the others were lying because Morena, as a party, will not have a qualified majority.
Carlos Alberto Puente Salas, a deputy from the PVEM, who was previously allied with the PRI and is now with Morena, said.
“It only took them 28 years to realize a rule that has been applied since 1996. Nothing more. When it was applied elsewhere before, it wasn’t bad there. Today it doesn’t suit us,” he said.
In the exchange of arguments, the sides only agreed that it should be the electoral authorities who should make the allocation of the 200 plurinominal seats.
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