The President of Mexico, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, took to the streets of Mexico City on Sunday to lead an extraordinary march of his supporters ahead of the 2024 elections and after the opposition demonstration against his proposal to reform the National Electoral Institute (INE).
Accompanied by Mexico City Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum and Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard, the president is advancing among a crowd of people who have slowed down the march and prevented his arrival at the Zocalo, although AMLO has preferred to continue on foot in a mass bath, reports ‘Proceso’.
«I invite all the people to participate in this historic moment,» declared the president on Saturday, aware of his strength in the polls, some of which give him a 60 percent approval rating, although he had previously ruled out that the objective of the march was to «show muscle.»
AMLO’s street presence, the first time he has marched in six years, follows a rally last week by civil society organizations in defense of the INE, the target of a reform being promoted by the Mexican president.
The opposition assures that the initiative, sent by the president to the Chamber of Deputies last April, is a strategy to eliminate the country’s autonomous electoral body.
The reform proposes, among other points, a cut in the INE and political parties’ budgets, in addition to the election of the Institute’s counselors and electoral magistrates by popular vote and not by appointment by legislators, according to the Mexican affiliate of CNN.
