Mexico City.- For the first time, the Specialized Chamber of the Electoral Tribunal determined that President Andrés Manuel López Obrador coerced the vote to favor his party.
This happened on May 9 and 11, 2023, right in the middle of the campaign to elect the governors of the State of Mexico and Coahuila.
“We must vote not only for the presidential candidate, we must vote for the legislators, for the candidates for deputies and senators so that the transformation has a qualified majority.
“Do you want pensions for senior citizens to continue? You already know who you are going to vote for. Do you want the ministers of the Supreme Court to continue earning 500, 600 thousand pesos a month? You already know who you are going to vote for,” the president harangued at the press conference on May 11.
The opposition parties denounced this, and after more than a year, the Specialized Chamber resolved the substance of the matter.
“There is an improper use of social programs and coercion of the vote by the head of the federal Executive Branch, since he used an argumentative line tending to condition the validity or benefits of social programs on a certain political option obtaining a qualified majority in Congress,” the Court determined.
He said that there was a violation of the principles of impartiality, neutrality and equity because his statements were of an electoral nature.
“The existence of misuse of public resources, since the public service used human, financial and material resources at its disposal for the organization, holding and broadcasting of the conferences denounced and used its social networks to disseminate the president’s statements,” he added.
The ruling states that he also committed personalized promotion, which is prohibited during election time, since he dedicated himself to boasting about his government’s achievements, when it was prohibited, in order to provoke “support or sympathy on the part of the citizens.”
He also violated government propaganda rules because his statements do not fall within the exceptions that an official can speak about during the ban.
Since the president cannot be sanctioned, but the officials in charge of organizing and broadcasting the morning conference can, his case was again sent to the Comptroller’s Office for action.
However, in the twenty resolutions that have been issued in the same sense, no action is known, so far, from this internal control body.
The parties also accused him of premature pre-campaign and campaign actions, however, the judges considered that he did not meet the characteristics to affirm this.
The complaint included Claudia Sheinbaum, then head of the Government of Mexico City, and Morena, however, the Court considered that they could not be blamed, since it was the president who spoke about them.
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