Fabiola Martinez
Newspaper La Jornada
Friday December 2, 2022, p. 4
What seemed like a processing session at the National Electoral Institute (INE) turned into a rude discussion between advisors that led to personal accusations.
On Wednesday night, the members of the INE General Council were summoned to approve the organization of the extraordinary election of a Tamaulipas senator.
In exposing the details, counselor Carla Humphrey pointed out that there was no justification for providing a thousand ballots to each special polling place, because that amount is never used, and then put the issue of the electronic ballot box on the table.
He argued that the INE is going backwards in the use of this mechanism, despite the fact that it is the only point on which all the parties agree, in view of the electoral reform.
He reminded his colleagues that the day before, at their weekly meeting, they had agreed to discuss the issue and it seems that there is not even a sketch of analysis here
lament.
The executive secretary, Edmundo Jacobo, took note and proposed a census of the number of electronic ballot boxes available in the country, a detail that the speaker appreciated.
Later, unexpectedly, when the round of interventions had already closed, President Lorenzo Córdova agreed to give the floor to counselor Jaime Rivera, who refuted the points made by Humphrey and, in the end, invited her not to use arguments that can be fallacious
.
The counselor made it clear to them, with ample numerals, that the institute was deliberately anchoring in the past, giving up the opportunity to move forward
in that alternative, and immediately rebuked Rivera energetically by demanding not to put adjectives to his comments because said that way, he considered, it is minimally disrespectful.
It seems to me like violence, a type of mansplaining violence, for example, as a new type of gender violence could be known today.
he warned, while making them see the country’s technological gap in this area, if one takes into account that the first electronic voting exercises took place here almost 20 years ago.
Two councilors and three councilors then came out to give a conciliatory speech at times and at others to implicitly or explicitly defend Rivera.
Córdova pointed out that the ballot box was used in 2020 – a fact that Humphrey corrected him – but that Mexico would go with it with leaded feet
not only because the ballot box requires a million-dollar investment, he argued, but because that is not yet in the law and, furthermore, with everything and electronic ballot boxes there are accusations of fraud, such as those made by Bolsonaro in Brazil, so that option it will have to be part of a horizon of evolution of our own electoral system going forward
.
But the situation became more tense when the adviser Ciro Murayama snapped at Humphrey: False victimhood is a form of authoritarianism
.
She did not give up and told him that she was a lawyer and knew the subject perfectly. it seemed to me [una actitud violenta]and what’s more: make no mistake, counselor Murayama, I am neither a victim nor am I a demagogue… accusing someone of false victimhood seems to me, once again, symbolic violence.
And although it was a virtual session, the tension was evident. The representatives of the political parties did not get into the lawsuit, but they did raise their eyebrows.
