John M Ackerman
C
as if it were a match of opposition, the National Electoral Institute (INE) openly militates against the President of the Republic. Since the December tantrum over the alleged lack of resources for the recall exercise (https://bit.ly/3wlWqXP) to date, its constant biased interpretations of the regulations constitute a grotesque violation of the constitutional principles in electoral matters of certainty, legality, independence, impartiality, maximum publicity and objectivity.
For example, today we are witnessing a systematic and well-financed attack, orchestrated from the highest levels of the national oligarchy, against the possibility that the exercise of revoking the mandate will strengthen the leadership of Andrés Manuel López Obrador. The main private media have invested enormous amounts of resources to simultaneously discredit the great achievements of the current government and to discourage citizen participation on April 10th.
The Federal Mandate Revocation Law grants broad powers to the INE to put a stop to the use of private resources to favor one or another option or, where appropriate, discourage citizen participation. The first paragraph of article 33 states that the INE must guarantee equity in information spaces, public opinion and/or dissemination
on revocation of mandate. And the fourth paragraph of the same article indicates that absolutely no other natural or legal person
which is not the same electoral authority, can hire advertising on radio and television aimed at influencing the opinion of citizens about the revocation of the mandate
.
However, the directors of the INE maintain a deathly silence in the face of serious violations of the regulations, demonstrating their complicity with the de facto powers and the political opposition that militate against the President of the Republic.
In contrast, the electoral authorities have looked for any pretext to come up with fanciful interpretations of the law in order to silence those who seek to promote the ratification of López Obrador’s mandate. His constant censorship of the expressions of public servants, party officials and popular representatives, even in private or strictly journalistic spaces, implies a clear excess of his legal powers.
If this excess were coupled, with an equally energetic action against the expressions of public and private powers, it could be concluded that the electoral institution, in the end, would be acting in a impartial
and Independent
. However, the contrast with the permissive and complicit indolence of these same authorities in the face of violations by private powers demonstrates their outrageous partiality.
In this context, the decree approved by the Congress of the Union on March 17, which clarifies that The expressions of public servants do not constitute government propaganda
neither information of public interest that must be disseminated
in accordance with the General Law of Transparency and Access to Public Information, among other details (https://bit.ly/3JsSRTk).
What is sought is just to balance the game board a bit in the current intense dispute between private powers and public powers over the revocation or ratification of the mandate of the current President of the Republic.
Let us remember that citizens have the full right of access to the plural and balanced information necessary to make their decisions freely and autonomously. The right to information will be guaranteed by the State
, reads the sixth article of our Magna Carta. So instead of just scolding and censuring López Obrador and those close to him, the INE must use all the powers at its disposal to make this important constitutional precept a reality.
Now, it is also important to exercise self-criticism and point out that we would not find ourselves in the current situation if, at the time, the operators of the Morena party in the Congress of the Union had conducted the process of approving the reforms in matters of revocation of mandate.
The fact that the current year has not coincided with the federal elections of 2021 and also that the INE is the only body in charge of dissemination
of the revocation of the mandate, in accordance with the seventh paragraph of article 35, section 9 of the Constitution, we owe it to no one other than Ricardo Monreal and Mario Delgado, coordinators of the parliamentary factions of Morena and heads of the Coordination Boards Respective policies in the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies when the reform was approved in 2019.
Monreal and Delgado set the table where Lorenzo Córdova and Ciro Murayama are now happily serving themselves.
