Under President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO), some of Mexico's democratic institutions are being undermined. It’s not yet clear if this is a precursor to reforming them, or the dawn of a new authoritarian era. But all signs currently suggest the latter. In recent months, AMLO has seemed more interested in bringing democratic institutions under his control rather than making them more efficient.
The warning signs are everywhere but I will discuss just two of them here. The first is the constant harassment by AMLO and Morena, the party he founded, of the National Electoral Institute (INE) and the Electoral Tribunal of the Federal Judiciary (TEPJF). For example, the president declared at his morning press conference in late April that the TEPJF and the INE “were created to prevent democracy”. It was obvious that he was frustrated by the INE’s decision, backed by the Tribunal, to prevent two Morena candidates from running for the governorship of Guerrero and Michoacán in south-central Mexico in elections on 6 June.
The party had to put up new candidates because the original nominees hadn’t submitted pre-campaign expenses to the INE, as required by law. The INE imposed the penalty that the law stipulates, yet AMLO’s reaction was one of anger: “Do you think that the INE councillors or the court magistrates are democrats? I say: no, on the contrary, they conspire against democracy.”
