The Mexican Chamber of Deputies elected this Friday for the first time a woman as president of the National Electoral Institute (INE), in an unusual vote by lottery against the background of a long conflict between President Andrés Manuel López Obrador and the outgoing head of the organism.
Guadalupe Taddei, 59, will take over from 2024 to Lorenzo Córdova, who in the final part of his administration called “democratic setback” to some legislative reforms to the electoral system promoted by López Obrador that implied a strong budget cut for the INE, among other things measures.
“I don’t know her, I know her family and they are progressive and Democratic people and honest people,” the president said of Taddei in his daily conference. “She is an experienced woman, look at her trajectory.”
The official, who has been in the INE for three decades, was elected in the lower house by the method of “insaculation” (a raffle) from a final quintet made up only of women. With the same system, four electoral advisors were also selected.
As the new head of the INE, Taddei will be in charge of directing the electoral process in June 2024 from which a new president of the country will emerge and both houses of Congress will be renewed, as well as other local authorities. The official’s term will begin on April 4 and end in 2032.
At the end of February, Congress approved several regulations to reorganize and define the administrative tasks of the INE and cut, among other things, its budget and powers through the closure of offices, some controversial changes that were suspended last week by the Supreme Court .
López Obrador has said the reforms strengthen democracy and reduce the influence of economic interests in politics, but critics say they could concentrate power in the ruler and his Movimiento Regeneración Nacional (Morena) party.
The president, who has repeatedly denounced that Córdova earns more than him and represents a corrupt regime in the country that he says he is fighting, previously sought a more ambitious electoral reform, but failed to achieve the qualified majority necessary to change the Constitution.
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