Full speech by José Woldenberg in defense of the INE

José Woldenberg, former president of the IFE, predecessor of the INE, was in charge of giving a speech at the Monument to the Revolution after finishing the march in defense of the electoral body.
The academic asked citizens to defend the electoral system that has been consolidated over the years. This is his full speech.
Woldenberg’s full speech
This is a holiday. We are gathered here with a single clear and transcendent objective: to defend the electoral system that several generations of Mexicans built, which has allowed the coexistence and competition of plurality and political stability, the peaceful transmission of public powers and the expansion of freedoms.

All this constitutes a common heritage and that is why we are here, citizens of very different political orientations and social extractions, party militants, members of social organizations and people without political affiliation who want Mexico to be the house that shelters us all.
We are here exercising our rights. The right to demonstrate, to have an opinion, to assemble peacefully to express our concerns and aspirations. We are part of a tide of opinion that cherishes and defends democracy.

As a country we were able to build a germinal democracy. We left behind the country of a single party, of an oppressive presidentialism, of elections without competition or authentic options, of constitutional powers that functioned as appendages of the Executive, of mostly pro-government media, to open the way to the expression and recreation of political diversity, to free, disputed and credible elections, to plural Congresses, governments of different orientations, Checks and balances in the state framework and without a doubt, a virtuous spiral that expanded the exercise of freedoms.
And for this to be possible, it required mobilizations, struggles, denunciations, agreements, many agreements, and above all to form electoral norms and institutions capable of offering guarantees of impartiality and equity to the diversity of political forces that shape the country.
Eight electoral reforms were carried out between 1988 and 2014 and the results are in sight.

It was necessary to build autonomous electoral authorities, courts capable of venting the acute conflict, building equitable conditions of competition, entry and exit doors for the different political currents that crystallized into parties, and gradually, but systematically we got used to diversity, to competitive contests, to alternation in the Executive, to plural congresses and to dialogue mechanisms. negotiation and agreement that they claimed.
I want to draw your attention to a single fact: the constitutional and peaceful, I stress, peaceful alternation of presidential power occurred for the first time in Mexico, thanks to that democratizing process.
In nearly two hundred years of independent life, our country had never achieved it.
That democracy was built with the work of millions, of several generations of Mexicans, whose culminating building was that of the National Electoral Institute. That great historical change cannot be explained without the existence of our electoral system.
The ownership of the Executive Power has changed and it has been conquered by party A, party B and party C. The Legislative Branch has picked up the changes in the political preferences of millions of Mexicans; yesterday’s minorities are today’s majorities; And across the country, that process is repeated and has been naturalized over nearly three decades.

We didn’t make it to a final station. Nor to a paradise. Just a germinal democracy, but that has allowed us to establish political plurality and that it can coexist and compete peacefully.
The biggest problem, the one that has brought us here, the one that forces us to take to the streets, the one that is in the center of public attention, is that a good part of what has been built is wanted to destroy from the government.
It is necessary to insist on that, because it means not only an aggression against existing institutions, but also the possibility of processing our political life in a democratic format.
Mexico cannot return to an electoral institution aligned with the government, incapable of guaranteeing the necessary impartiality throughout the electoral process. Our country does not deserve to return to the past because what has been built allows authentic elections, the cornerstone of any democratic system.
Mexico cannot destroy the professional skills, knowledge acquired and commitment of career civil servants.
Mexico cannot centralize all electoral processes in two huge institutions, not only because we are, according to the Constitution, a federal republic, but because neither the INE nor a single Court will be able to efficiently achieve what today finds a channel and solution in 32 sovereign entities.
Again I try to illustrate what I say with evidence.
Since the last electoral reform, in 2014, 55,336 positions of popular election have been disputed in the states and Mexico City, including 55 governorships, 93 legislatures and 5,932 city councils.
Last year alone, state institutes registered 275,424 local candidacies. With such numbers, is it desirable and possible to concentrate, centralize, and manage that political universe in a single institution?
For this reason, Mexico cannot unceremoniously get rid of the federalist framework in electoral matters without losing efficiency and confidence. Nor of the courts in electoral matters because they are still necessary to vent the permanent litigation that accompanies our elections.
Mexico does not deserve a constitutional reform in electoral matters driven by a single will, however relevant it may be. There are important lessons in the past: reforms that were the result of collective wills forged with the tried and tested methods of dialogue and agreement.
Mexico cannot and should not transfer the electoral roll to another institution because the INE has more than complied in the preparation of a reliable list, whose credentials have become de facto citizen identity cards.

Mexico would experience avoidable, unnecessary, endless and costly conflicts if the electoral rules are not the product of the consensus of the main political forces in the country.
Those of us who are here today, citizens, all in the exercise of our rights, know, because we live it, that in our country there are different ways of thinking, different interests and evaluative bodies, different political and ideological platforms and that only from the most blind authoritarianism can we aspire to homogenize that wealth of expressions.
On the contrary, we value that diversity because we believe that in it lies part of the wealth of our nation and that is why we are obliged, yes, obliged, to guarantee its expression, coexistence and civilized competition.
And it is in this horizon that authentic, free, balanced choices are irreplaceable. Our future cannot be the result of seduction by a past that was banished at a good time.
The next electoral appointments must have the same guarantees as those of the immediate past: reliable register, fairness in the conditions of competition, impartiality of professional officials, neat counting of votes, preliminary results on election night.
We call on all parliamentary groups, yes to all without exclusions or exceptions, those that make up the Chambers of the Federal Congress and the 32 congresses in the entities, to defend what has been built in democratic matters and not lead our country to a stage successfully overcome: that of authoritarianism that was aided by electoral authorities in a way.
Today we reaffirm our deep commitment to democracy and thereby defend an electoral system that shelters us all and that allows the coexistence of diversity and the substitution of governments by peaceful and participatory means.
That is the Mexico we want: a Mexico for all, a Mexico whose diversity has a format for its coexistence and competition.
That is why we say:
No to the destruction of the INE!
No to the destruction of local institutes!
No to the destruction of local courts!
No to the pretense of aligning the electoral bodies with the will of the government!
No to authoritarianism!
Yes to democracy!
Yes to a democratic Mexico!
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Original source in Spanish