The National Electoral Institute (INE) of Mexico announced on Tuesday that the signatures required to activate the referendum to recall the mandate of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador had been collected, although it is still in doubt how the consultation will be carried out because the electoral body alleges that you do not have enough resources for the process.
“With yesterday’s cutoff, Monday, January 17, this percentage of 3% has already been exceeded and we already have the goal,” said the director of the Federal Electoral Registry, René Miranda, confirming that 2,845 had been verified. .634 signatures of citizens in favor of the referendum, a record that exceeds the goal of 2.75 million signatures, equivalent to 3% of the voters, which was required by law to call the consultation.
López Obrador has promoted the referendum, scheduled for April 10, to revalidate his administration after three years in office. The consultation is expected to ask Mexicans if they want the ruler to continue in his six-year term until 2024 or to resign.
At the end of last year, the local organization “Let democracy continue”, which supports the president, assured that it had registered ten million signatures in favor of the consultation with the INE. For several weeks the electoral body was reviewing the rubrics to determine their validity.
The holding of the referendum has unleashed a political battle between the government and the INE, which has ensured that it does not have enough resources to carry out the vote because the Chamber of Deputies, controlled by the ruling party, made a budget cut of 4,913 million pesos (about 245.65 million dollars).
The electoral body maintains that they require 3,830 million pesos (about 191.5 million dollars) to carry out the consultation and that it only has 1,503 million pesos (about 75.15 million dollars).
At the end of last year, the INE announced the suspension of the referendum process due to lack of resources, but later the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation ordered it to reactivate it.
The electoral authorities last week made a request for extraordinary resources to the Ministry of Finance to finance the referendum, but have not yet received a response. Both López Obrador, who maintains an open confrontation with the INE and has been in favor of the renewal of the body, and other members of the cabinet have advanced that no more contributions will be given to the electoral body.
.