For plurinominals, the INE will adhere to the Constitution

Fabiola Martinez and Jessica Xantomila

The newspaper La Jornada
Thursday, August 1, 2024, p. 3

The president of the National Electoral Institute (INE), Guadalupe Taddei, said that for the allocation of legislators by the principle of proportional representation, this body will not go beyond the margins of the Constitution, the law and the mechanism approved by the INE last December, which has since been known to all parties.

The institute neither adds nor removes; the institute applies the law, the institute will not go beyond the margins of the law and will be attentive to what the agreement says and the Constitution itself and our own regulations indicate, and the pact itself (of the INE) of December 7he told the press in response to a specific question about the warning from the opposition and related groups that if the calculation of plurinominal spaces is not done with the criteria of distribution between coalitions, there will be an overrepresentation of Morena and its allies in Congress.

Opposition parties demand that the INE interpreter the Constitution and remove plurinominal legislators from Morena and its allies, as a strategy to prevent them from achieving a qualified majority.

Taddei pointed out that each of the 11 councils is currently analyzing the issue and is attentive to the different opinions in order to establish a position on the draft agreement, to be voted on in a council session on August 23, from which it will be defined how many seats will correspond to each party, that is, the spaces not won at the polls on June 2, but based on the votes obtained by each party, among other factors established by the regulations.

He reiterated that the General Council had reached an agreement on December 7, before any decisions had been made regarding candidates and possible coalitions.

“All the political parties involved in the contest are very clear about this; there were two challenges to this agreement and it was confirmed by the higher court, meaning that this agreement has the stamp of finality.

And something wonderful about this agreement is that all the parties and councillors knew about it at the same time, we worked on it at the same time, before there were any candidacies, coalitions and, fundamentally, before we had (electoral) results.he told reporters.

Once again, the councilors regretted that financial entities such as the Financial Intelligence Unit and the Tax Administration Service of the Treasury Department do not respond in a timely manner to the INE’s requirements, issued to advance the audit tasks, so some of the councilors, such as Claudia Zavala, stated that it is necessary to apply legal actions.

Regarding the current situation, Jorge Montaño, president of the Oversight Committee, pointed out that only on July 22 the council approved complaints about campaign expenses linked to the June 2 contest, but there are still 450 ongoing procedures in the Technical Oversight Unit.

He reported that from 2016 to 2024 the General Council has approved 4,798 procedures; from January to July alone, 2,132 matters were resolved.

74 procedures were resolved this Wednesday, including alleged simulations of expenses, which is why fines were applied to several parties, including Morena and the Labor Party, for 21 million.