Jorge Fernández Menéndez, Excelcior, 2/25/2010
The political reform initiative presented by the PRI in the senate has, as does that sent by president Calderón, many points that could be useful to reform the political system, but both begin with fundamentally contradictory positions: with a strong executive and possibilities of operation, seeking decision-making mechanisms and direct citizen representation, or clearly advancing toward a type of parliamentarism in which real power is more and more concentrated in the congress. The first option captures the spirit of the presidential initiative, while the second is in line with the proposal presented by the PRI in the senate.
There are some points of agreement between the two: mainly, reducing the number of deputees and senators and the possibility of reelection of legislators at all levels. The idea in the PRI proposal es to maintain the current 300 deputees that are directly elected while reducing the seats elected by proportional representation from 200 to 100. In the presidential proposal both types of seats are reduced by a third. In the senate their is agreement that the proportional representation seats should disappear because it violates the spirit of the constitution since some entities have greater levels of representation than others. Reelection would be for two consecutive periods for the deputees (federal and local) and one for senators. A deputy could be in his or her position up to nine years and a senator twelve.
Fernández Menéndez goes on to explain some of the differences between the proposals and to suggest that both sides of the debate need to clearly define a vision of the political system that their proposals aim to create, making clear that they do not simply aim to empower themselves.