For errors in spending 2020, the INE fines parties with $687.4 million

Alonso Urrutia

Newspaper La Jornada
Saturday February 26, 2022, p. eleven

By confirming irregularities in its 2020 spending reports, the National Electoral Institute imposed fines on political parties for 687.4 million pesos, of which 242.2 million correspond to national leaders, 420 million to state committees and 25 million pesos to local parties. 41 percent of the sanctions were due to illegal partisan transfers.

The INE identified these irregular operations for an amount greater than 1,300 million pesos, of which 1,238.7 million were attributed to Morena: 372 million were transferred from the state committees to the national leadership for a trust destined for the acquisition of real estate , established on December 29, 2019, and 866 million in which Morena did not justify the legality of the transfer from the states to the National Executive Committee.

The INE ordered Morena to return the resources of the trust (with the exception of almost 75 million pesos that they already spent on the purchase of real estate), to the state committees so that they, if they so determine, can establish local trusts with the same purpose. .

The morenista deputies Mario Llergo and César Hernández came out in defense of the trust that was legally constituted. My party considered it necessary to create this trust to form a fixed asset that would allow us to provide the physical conditions to each of our local committees in the country.said the first.

Hernández disqualified the criteria applied by the INE to sanction this operation, for which he called them in a decisive, energetic and forceful way, to watch over the exercise of democracy so that its control is above biased, particular or, it even seems, partisan interests. Trusts are instruments to manage and make resources more efficient, but they do not have to be eternal.

The councilors Adriana Favela and Carla Humphrey considered that the contributions of the state committees to the National Executive Committee were not illegal, because, Humphrey said, it is part of the exercise of their autonomy. In contrast, the counselor Ciro Murayama affirmed that the INE does not demonize the trusts and the sanctions are imposed because this transfer from the states is illegal.

The party promoted additional transfers from its state councils to the CEN for 866.9 million pesos, without being able to verify that these were in any of the permitted cases. Morena appropriated resources that arose from local public financing. If the money absorbed through the trust and other transfers is added, one thousand 239 million pesos are reachedhe added.

Hernández’s defense of Morena’s trusts deserved the questioning of the counselor Uuc Kib Espadas in allusion to the criticism that Morena has launched against the INE trusts.

–Why is the trust for works of the INE considered by you a robbery to the nation and, nevertheless, the equivalent trust destined to acquire the headquarters of Morena is legal and serves democracy?

Hernández appealed to the 30 million votes that supported Morena’s austerity project and her proposal to put an end to privileges and golden bureaucracies.

The president adviser, Lorenzo Córdova, maintained that the control has allowed correcting excesses of the parties in general terms: three parties concentrate 72 percent of the sanctions. If the sanctions proposed in 2020 are compared with those applied in 2019, it is observed that four of the seven registered political parties reduce their sanctions by 56 percent on average.

The sanctions were: Morena, 309 million pesos; Labor Party, 94 million; PRD, 83.6 million; PVEM, 52.4 million; PAN, 48.8 million; PRI, 54.4 million, and Citizen Movement, 14.4 million pesos.