PULSE NEWS MEXICO

A convoluted scheme that was pushed through earlier in the day and that would have rewritten the statutes of Mexico’s centralist Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) to allow its current president — the controversial Alejandro “Alito” Moreno — to remain in his post through the 2024, was reversed late Monday, Feb. 27, by the country’s National Electoral Institute (INE).

Moreno, who has irked many PRI militants by caving in to the leftist initiatives of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) for his own political gain, had tried to rewrite the PRI’s statutes so that he would not have to resign in August of this year.

The PRI brass met in a closed-door conference Monday to approve the changes that would have extended Moreno’s term as head of the party.

But no sooner had the PRI approved the new bylaws, than the INE also met to reject the party’s reformed statutes.

The INE, in a six-to-five vote, opted to invalidate the changes to the internal party regulations because, it said, “there were no extraordinary justifications” for the bylaw rewrite and that the decision to change the rules was the result of procedural irregularities.

Consequently, the INE determined, the bylaw changes proposed by Moreno regarding the internal workings of the PRI “are invalidated and the current statutes are maintained until the Electoral Tribunal can rule on the matter.”

“The competence of the National Political Council is not accredited to carry out the approval of the modification of the Statutes in the LXII extraordinary session, since it did not find and motivate the duly justified case that would empower it to do so,” the INE said in a written statement.

On Dec. 19, Moreno proposed a reform to Article 83 of the PRI statutes, which would have allowed him to remain in office until 2024.