MORENA prepares to approve AMLO’S initiative to appropriate budget, despite opposition.

AMLO intends to take away the powers of the Legislative Power and appropriate resources.

MEXICO CITY (Agencies) – Despite the resounding refusal of the PAN, PRI, Movimiento Ciudadano, and PRD, MORENA members of Congress will endorse President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador’s initiative to grant him powers to reallocate public spending. 

Morena’s party coordinator Mario Delgado said they are ready to approve the Executive’s proposal in an extraordinary period scheduled for Tuesday, May 5.

This week, the reform to the Federal Law of Budget and Treasury Responsibility will be approved in committees. Afterward, it will be sent next Tuesday to the plenary session of the Lower House to be voted by a simple majority, that is, Morena and its allies will be able to authorize it without the need of the opposition votes.

The parliamentary coordinator of the Morena party in Congress detailed the controversial initiative. “We are going to define in the law how to deal with an emergency like the one we are experiencing. What do we have to do? Define the conditions of an economic emergency, for that we need parameters from the Bank of Mexico or the INEGI, so this emergency can be declared. We are going to delimit the changes that the Executive can make in the budget. When the budget requires major surgery, the Executive will have to send it again to the House for its approval, because it is the only one empowered, according to the Constitution, to approve the Expenditure Budget”.

He said that the opposition’s versions are false that the President of the Republic intends to take away powers from the Legislative Branch when the only thing he is seeking is to provide the Executive with resources to face the pandemic.

The opposition, for its part, insists that López Obrador’s initiative is unconstitutional. Hector Yunes, the spokesman for the PRI party, said that with his action, Lopez Obrador seeks to take over the budget and exercise it as if it were his patrimony, without processes of control or evaluation of results.

“It symbolizes the president’s contempt for our Constitution, which he swore to comply with and enforce, and whose Article 74 says that the power to approve and modify the Budget is exclusive to the Lower Chamber of Congress”.

Yunes has stated that Lopez Obrador wants to take over public money to finance a herd of “white elephants,” such as Dos Bocas, Santa Lucia, and the Mayan Train.

Tonatiuh Bravo Padilla, coordinator of Movimiento Ciudadano, like Yunes and other members of the opposition, said the proposal of the Federal Executive is unconstitutional because it seeks to take away the legislative branch’s powers in budgetary matters. “The president seeks to expand his powers to reallocate resources in a discretionary manner under the pretext of attending to this economic and health emergency, instead of agreeing with the legislature and seeking agreement, he intends to subordinate the Congress,” said Bravo Padilla.

Veronica Juarez Piña, the coordinator of the PRD, said it is an “illegal authoritarian pretension” that López Obrador wants to achieve. She reiterated that they would not endorse any initiative that seeks to grant excessive powers to the federal Executive, and that violates and weakens the powers of the legislative branch because this would break with the division of powers and would undermine one of the fundamental foundations of democracy.