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Worry precedent
One dollar one vote
By: Carlos Damián January 7, 2012
IFE : absurd measures
México. - The General Council of the Electoral Federal Institute (IFE, in Spanish) it discussed yesterday, in a lingering extraordinary session and with marked differences as federal organization the restrictions imposed previously by the Electoral Tribunal of the Judicial Brand of the Federation (TEPJF, in Spanish) to the unique presidential pre-candidacies we should remember that last Wednesday (12/21/2011) the maximum organ of electoral justice solved that the unique pre- candidates cannot carry out proselytizing acts in an open way, “because they could incur in acts of premature campaign."

As answer, the presidential applicant Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (AMLO) sent to that jurisdictional organ a questionnaire he requests to the authorities in the matter in what they clarified the reaches of the rights from those pre-candidates to the free expression and the free association, and they specified that they have allowed in the mark of the current legislation electoral. Once the TEPJF alternated the application from the Tabasco-man to the IFE, this edited a verdict in that was affirmed, among other things that the “electoral law doesn’t establishes a restrictive one regarding the type of acts that they can carry out” the unique pre-candidates, and that there wasn’t, in consequence, artificial reason to limit its public appearances neither to prohibit them to make pre-campaign.

Electoral Federal institute (IFE)
It is not by means of ambiguous exhorts to the “prudence” of the political actors that the IFE will be able to revert the legacy of impunity and simulation that today characterizes to the electoral processes, but with a firm and institutional action that imposes without considerations the right state. Instead of spending hundred of thousands of dollars in having deployed in the news without any legal relevance, what should make the TEPJF is to investigate and to sanction the recurrent frauds to the law that they eat away the democratic system. They are right the electoral consultants when they affirm that “our country deserves an exemplary electoral process” and that “it depends it on countersigning the democratic vocation and attached to the effective rules of all the Mexicans". But they make a mistake when only accusing the political actors when the same electoral officials are the main ones of having generated the current context of illegality generalized in electoral matter.

The IFE is today's day submerged in a deep crisis of genuineness that leads us to a questioned electoral stage and it full with political conflict. If the three new electoral consultants want to avoid this dark outcome it won't be enough with helping to administer the misfortune, it is necessary that they help to print a new institutional dynamics immediately to the electoral organ. Let us remember that from the electoral reformation of 2007, and for the sake of fomenting the justness, the article 41 of the Constitution prohibits explicitly the recruiting or acquisition of spaces in radio and television for the political parties. This includes the “donation“of spaces on behalf of the media. It is what eats away the foundations of the democratic coexistence are not those officials that look for to assure the execution of the right State with courage and independence, but the political actors that look for to give the turn to the law and the authorities that are made of turn a view blind before the constitutional violations.

Imperfections of the current legislation in electoral matter
The consultants of the IFE had agreed, for majority, to allow the presence of the presidential applicants of unit in public acts, but to limit their presence in radio and television announcements during the time that the pre-campaigns last. The previous described circumstance shows, in the first place, the imperfections of the current legislation in electoral matter, of that which we infer that in such a document it has some enormous conceptual lagoons. But mainly the difficulties of the authorities in the matter, to compensate such deficiencies with approach and common sense. If like the own IFE recognized, the normative one effective it doesn't establish a distinction among the unique presidential pre-candidates and those that face internal struggles in its respective parties, the reasonable thing it would be that the authorities guaranteed to some and other the same rights.

On the other hand the consideration of the tribunal that the activities of the first ones should be limited to avoid a supposed advantage position regarding the seconds it is unfounded by the light of the empiric evidence: until today, the three presidential pre-candidates of the Party National Action (PAN) they enjoy prerogatives and they witnesses privileged mediatised regarding the applicants of the opposition, and it change it the allegations of the TEPJF that the referred restrictions obey a desire of offering justness in the party struggles. It is remembered that the unique pre-candidates is: Enrique Pena Nieto (PRI), and Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (PRD),

The activities of the pre candidates should only be limited to their party
A similar trial deserves the argument that the pronouncements of the presidential applicants should not be directed to the population in general: taken to the end, similar reasoning could lead to get out the viability of the pre-campaigns, because it is impossible to assure that the public of the announcements diffused by radio and television is only constituted for militant and adherent of certain party. In the case of the unique pre-candidacies, the TEPJF exhibited a questionable attitude, not only for the impression that gave of favoring to the applicants presidential of the party in the power, but also because it shows a propensity to judiciary the electoral process and to contaminate it with not very legal considerations, and to make worse matters the own TEPJF accuses a deficit of credibility in its acting as judge electoral impartial and reliable, had recount of its questionable paper in the qualification of the electoral process of 2006, which gave for good in spite of having detected serious irregularities."

Of new balance it gives us the impression that the measures taken by the tribunal are to support to the officialise, appearing the factious interpretations of the law, they would be against the alternative and progressive candidacies, and certainly they return recurrent other bad habits that contaminated the electoral atmosphere five years ago. Although there is partial corrections to the unjust limitations impose by the TEPJF, the direction that it will acquire the discussion around the unique pre- candidates won't have good face precedent to the federal elections of 2012. (La Jornada, opinión, p. 6, December 27, 2011).