An imprudence, the dinner with the PRI member Viggiano in Polanco: head of the TEPJF

Fabiola Martinez

Newspaper La Jornada
Monday, January 2, 2023, p. 10

I admit that it was imprudentsays the presiding magistrate of the Electoral Tribunal of the Federal Judiciary (TEPJF), Reyes Rodríguez Mondragón, regarding the dinner he had, in a restaurant in Polanco, with Carolina Viggiano, then candidate of the PRI-PAN alliance. PRD to the Hidalgo government, at a time when the qualification process for those elections was underway.

However, he argues that he had these types of meetings, outside his office, with other political leaders and that is not why he compromises his actions.

The goal is to have a court without colors partisans and less solve for be good with powerhe points out in an interview with La Jornada.

The dinner in Polanco has not been the only episode in which the impartiality of the country’s highest electoral court is called into question, and as in the past the press has documented administrative excesses by the TEPJF, Rodríguez Mondragón says that out of personal conviction he has savings programs and rationality of spending are under way.

The court It did have a challenge to increase citizen trust and recover our institutional reputation and we achieved ithe claimed.

In 2022, on November 14, the governor of Campeche, Layda Sansores, disclosed conversations that show alleged influence peddling between the TEPJF magistrate Felipe Fuentes Barrera and the PRI leader, Alejandro Moreno, since the judge he reveals the meaning of one of his projects and, as if he were a political adviser, he gives the PRI member suggestions and cell phones from his colleagues to lobby for issues.

Reyes Rodríguez was appointed president of the TEPJF in August 2021 – and ends his term in October 2024. He is a lawyer who forged part of his professional career in the team of former president Felipe Calderón.

Faced with episodes like that of his colleague, he points out that his duty, until proven otherwiseis to trust your peers. There is a presumption of innocenceadduces.

“I want to trust that all of us there conduct ourselves based on principles of impartiality, independence, neutrality, etc.

I myself have been the subject of public criticism for meeting with a political actor; I recognized the fact because I meet with all those who ask me for an audience, with Mario Delgado (leader of Morena), with Marko Cortés (of the PAN), who has been in this office, and not only in the offices, he also did it in public places, maybe it was reckless, but it’s part of our culture and the access we’re trying to have to hear all political voiceshe pointed.

I have met in restaurants or in cafes with leaders. She (Viggiano) is the general secretary of the PRI and also an actor in some trials, like the others, and I listen to them to understand her situation.

– Isn’t your office here in the upper room for those meetings?

I already do it here. I recognize that it was imprudent, but just as I trust that when I have this exchange and dialogue I do not transgress the principles of my function, I also have to trust the magistrates in principle.

He was also asked about the resolution of the upper room in which links the jurisdictional authorities of the country to take into account if a candidate for a candidacy has repeatedly transgressed the Constitution, in electoral matters, and if because of this they would lose their honest way of living and their eligibility.

In this regard, he pointed out: “There is a sentence that says that ‘if there are serious violations of the Political Constitution in terms of political-electoral rights on repeated occasions, the courts can assess whether they are complying with the requirement of an honest way of living, for purposes to be eligible.”