In an open and repeated way, Morena has a strategy, for now contained in the state of Mexico, where it undertakes strategic litigation to censor the press and restrict freedom of expression. What she is doing is accusing journalists of gender violence, so that precautionary measures are issued and their criticisms eliminated and to protect that judgments about public action, not with the sex of the person, are taken up by more communicators. Until now his intentions have been stopped, but nothing is written in the coming months, because Morena’s de facto testing laboratory in the state of Mexico, if it starts to succeed, will be extended to the presidential and federal elections in 2024.
The first button to punish journalists and a half was pressed in 2021, when Leonardo Kurchenko and whoever writes this were denounced for gender-based political violence by Michelle Núñez, at that time Morena’s candidate for mayor of Valle de Bravo, after which published that the candidate of the opposition alliance, Sudykey Rodríguez, had been deprived of her freedom by La Familia Michoacana to intimidate her and force her to abandon the electoral contest. Rodríguez went into hiding and virtually stopped campaigning, leaving the way open for Núñez.
The Mexican Electoral Institute gave entry to the complaint and began a lawsuit in court, where the journalists argued that the statements in their columns did not originate from a gender issue, but rather from their public actions. The columns did not suggest prejudice against women, but rather analyzed the way in which organized crime was acting in a way that, in fact, benefited Morena. Whoever this writes appealed and won the case; Kourchenko continues to fight in court.
Last year they pushed the second button. Dozens of Morena legislators in the Mexico City Congress filed a complaint and requested precautionary measures against two journalists, Denise Dresser and the person who writes this, alleging that they had committed acts of gender violence against Delfina Gómez, pre-candidate to the government of the state of Mexico. The Mexican Electoral Institute ordered the removal of all written comments on the various platforms, and to refrain from referring to Gómez as an electoral criminal again.
The accusations were based on the fact that Gómez, when she was mayor of Texcoco in 2015, withheld a percentage of the salary of municipal workers, and that the more than two million pesos that were taken from them involuntarily, to finance Morena campaigns. In January of last year, the Electoral Tribunal of the Federal Judiciary (TEPJF) fined Morena for illegal financing, but it did not do so with Gómez, because despite the fact that she had committed the crime, she had not benefited individually. .
Dresser promoted a lawsuit where she argued that the Mexican electoral authorities made an improper analysis of political violence based on gender, because her comments were not discriminatory nor did they contain stereotypes due to the fact that she was a woman. The precautionary measures to refrain from disseminating similar content about Gómez, she argued, constituted prior censorship and infringed the right to disseminate plural information, therefore they were illegal. Finally, she said, the resolution of the authority produced an inhibitory effect, disabling citizen participation in the political debate.
The Superior Chamber of the TEPJF revoked the resolution of the Mexican electoral bodies, but only applied it in her favor, for which reason the precautionary measures were left firm for the other accused. Whoever writes this never received notification of the complaint, but his lawyers recommended filing an electoral trial in any way, where in addition to retaking Dresser’s arguments, it was requested that the right of access to justice be recognized for those who are not immersed in the electoral contest, like journalists, and to rule on the use of complaints against journalists and communicators as mechanisms to inhibit the free expression of ideas regarding electoral processes.
On the last day of last year, the Superior Chamber of the TEPJF revoked the resolutions of the Mexican electoral bodies because gender violence against Gómez was not even proven in the complaint. However, as in the Dresser sentence, they did not rule on the appeal to inhibit the freedom of ideas, nor was there a generic resolution.
The resolutions in the TEPJF have a bittersweet taste. Although journalists in particular won their cases, the threat remains not only in a group, such as communicators, but in any person in general, due to the lack of a resolution that protects those who are denounced in similar cases. But they also leave those who do not have timely advice or access to justice or resources to defend themselves completely unprotected. Its resolutions leave doors open within the legal system for those inhibitory practices to be followed.
The use of laws to silence the press is not a unique case in Mexico. For example, in the context of the war in Ukraine, several Russian oligarchs sued a Financial Times journalist for revealing details of her relations with President Vladimir Putin. Thirty-one states in the American Union have laws that protect media and journalists from “SLAPP” lawsuits – strategic litigation against public participation. Canada and Australia have passed similar laws and the European Union is on the same path. In Mexico we are behind, although the attempts to alter and modify the content in the media and silence the freedom of the press are advancing rapidly.
Laws, with Morena controlling the majorities in the cameras, there will be no. Freedom of expression in electoral processes is in the hands of the TEPJF, which in the next denunciations of gender violence will have the opportunity, wasted up to now, to issue general and comprehensive resolutions that prevent strategic litigation undertaken by the powerful, as we are beginning to see dangerously regularly.
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