Adriana Favela
, head of the Complaints and Reports Commission of the National Electoral Institute of Mexico (INE) , informed of the detection of 15,126 citizens who have been unduly affiliated to political parties in the past 4 years .
At a talk during a journalist workshop for the electoral process, Favela informed that all nine political parties were involved in this unduly procedure and several of them have already been sanctioned with fines of 43,000 pesos for each non-consensual affiliation.
“Out of the 15,000 cases, we have solved around 2,000 and most of them have turned out to be well-founded. The fines that we are imposing on all political parties is of 43,000 pesos, and they may be applied in cases where people were involuntarily added to militant groups without any documents to prove the legitimacy of the affiliations, or in cases where people were duly affiliated, but chose to become unaffiliated and their requests were ignored,” Favela pointed out.
She suggested that citizens should regularly check party lists to make sure that they’re not unduly affiliated, or consult the National Electoral Institute’s official website to confirm that they haven’t been added to any political party lists, and if they have, that they should file a complaint before the electoral authorities.
“In the best-case scenario, people should check political party lists all the time. I do so with my colleagues once every three months, because sometimes, you just randomly appear on a list without your knowledge,” she stated.
In this context, Adriana Favela and Carlos Ferrer , head of the Technical Unit of Disputes at the INE , have informed that, until now, 440 special procedures have been sanctioned and 369 of them have already been taken to the Federal Electoral Court (TEPJF) for prosecution, which is equivalent to 83.86% of total, with 71 pending cases .
They added that most of the complaints came from political parties and that 93 of all complaints have been due to the incorrect use of radio and television broadcasts. 94 of them were due to defamation and false accusations.
52 more cases were due to the illicit acquisition of radio and television time and 48 of them for anticipated campaign events.
They have also detected 42 complaints for violations of the Constitution Article 134 , which forbids the use of public resources for personal promotion during the electoral contest.
319 preventive measures have been requested, out of which only 91 may legally proceed.
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