Lilian Hernandez and Fabiola Martinez
The newspaper La Jornada
Thursday, July 18, 2024, p. 6
Six candidates for federal deputy and senate seats were accused of exceeding campaign spending limits. Today is the deadline for those involved to clarify these anomalies detected by the National Electoral Institute (INE), as well as 63 former candidates for local offices.
Otherwise, the Institute’s Oversight Unit will approve the opinions at the General Council meeting next Monday and the corresponding sanctions will be applied, the Oversight Committee determined last Sunday, at the meeting in which it was informed about these cases.
At the same session, it was reported that the Oversight Unit reviewed 6,478 reports submitted by 1,309 federal candidates in the Comprehensive Oversight System (SIF), of which six exceeded the established expenses.
Regarding the analysis of the entire audit (federal and local), Councilor Dania Ravel complained that for the review of the reports the workload was enormous
and the very short timeframes for making observations on the opinions, which were also incomplete.
Ravel claimed that the opinions were circulated one minute before midnight, the deadline for their distribution, which meant one day less for the councillors to review them.
He added that some versions of the opinions were not finished, as they did not include the annexes of figures or did not coincide with the observations, in addition to the fact that some said pending analysis
or the amounts involved were not detailed.
The advisor considered that the failures in the circulation of documents delayed the review of the opinions.
Regarding the criteria for sanctions, the commission on the matter decided to increase the fine for unproven expenses, so they will be sanctioned with 100 percent of the amount involved instead of the 50 percent agreed in the original proposal. However, it decided to reduce the sanctions for unreported expenses, lowering the fine from 100 to 50 percent of the amount involved.
