For three decades there has been no electoral fraud in Mexico: TEPJF

The president of the Electoral Tribunal of the Federal Judiciary (TEPJF), Reyes Rodríguez Mondragón, assured that for three decades the elections in our country are no longer staged and there is no electoral fraud. He defended the permanence of independent authorities in that court within the framework of the electoral reform initiative of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador.

When presenting his work report before the plenary session of the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation (SCJN), the Federal Judicial Council and the TEPJF, Reyes Rodríguez said that for decades it was not the citizens who chose their representatives, a decision that corresponded to the party in power. He maintained that governments did not emanate from the sum of the votes of Mexicans and that nobody trusted the elections, “because there were no independent institutions that protected their vote or defended their election. The elections were nothing more than a staging”.

He stated that it was thanks to a social demand for free and authentic elections that Mexico moved from partisan hegemony to plural democracy, which is why today the TEPJF “guarantees fair play and offers timely and quality justice.”

“For three decades, citizens have rewarded or punished the performance of governments through their vote. The right par excellence of all democracy. From this transition, autonomous authorities were born that provided rules and procedures to political actors. After 70 years of governments of a single color, the people pushed towards alternation, with new institutions. We are moving from a monochromatic policy to a multiplicity of colors at all levels of government. Alternation and plurality became emblems of our political system. Today we have a democracy and more than 80% of Mexicans consider that the electoral system works well, and electoral justice is the cornerstone of it,” said Rodríguez Mondragón.

It should be noted that in his initiative to electoral reformPresident López Obrador argues electoral fraud in Mexico, for which he suggests the replacement of the National Electoral Institute (INE) by the National Institute of Elections and Consultations (INEC), and the appointment of new electoral advisers and magistrates by popular vote.

In this framework, the magistrate indicated that the democratic game requires clear rules, actors committed to democracy and impartial and independent arbitrators who monitor compliance with the law.

In his speech before Arturo Zaldívar, Minister President of the SCJNJudge Reyes Rodríguez Mondragón highlighted that since its creation, the TEPJF has responded “more than” to the demands of the citizenry and political parties, and this is shown by the sanctions it has issued for illegal conduct, the defense of gender parity and rights in vulnerable situations, as well as for the safeguarding of freedom of expression and of the press.

“Society demands professional, impartial and transparent elections. Citizens demand to firmly combat vote buying, the improper use of public resources, the intervention of their governments and their officials, as well as violence and threats that restrict the freedom to vote in electoral processes.

“There is no true electoral justice without an independent and trustworthy Tribunal; a Court impervious to corruption, to the pressures of other powers and sensitive to social reality. (…) A democracy is only possible with free and honest elections, and for this the court limits and corrects the abuses, restoring the legal order”, said the magistrate.

Reyes Rodríguez said that despite these advances, “as long as the citizen’s will is altered by vote buying, undue interference in electoral processes and other bad practices, the authorities will not be able to feel satisfied.”

He stressed that in Mexico there is electoral justice that attends to what really matters to the people. He highlighted that between November 1, 2021 and October 31, 2022, the court worked on five axes: an independent and trustworthy court; an inclusive and rights court; a professional court; an efficient and effective court; an open and collaborative court.

The magistrate said that a current challenge is the improvement of direct participation exercises. He gave as an example the revocation of the mandate, which this year was carried out -he said- in the midst of the absence of a legal framework and a budgetary insufficiency so that the INE will execute it He asserted that despite this, the court resolved 8,899 issues from that exercise, including an order to Congress to issue the regulatory law for the revocation of mandate.

Rodríguez Mondragón reviewed some of the most controversial resolutions of the Court in the last year, such as the analysis he did to rule out the participation of organized crime in this year’s election for governor of Tamaulipas.

The magistrate stated that society prefers that political conflicts be resolved peacefully, and stressed that proof of this are the 14,310 lawsuits that political parties, militants, and citizens presented to that Court during that period.

He mentioned that the Electoral Tribunal is ready to face the challenges of the elections in Coahuila and the State of Mexico, and to prepare the 2023-2024 electoral process. “In Mexico there is electoral justice and our democracy has an Electoral Tribunal that guarantees fair play and offers timely and quality justice; an Electoral Tribunal that protects the vote of the people and defends their election; an Electoral Tribunal that balances the balance to break with structural inequalities; and above all, an Electoral Tribunal that belongs to the citizens and that is the result of a long struggle for democracy and freedoms”, she pointed out.

Finally, in his work report, the Presiding Magistrate mentioned that to consolidate confidence in his decisions, the Court adopted the random shift of projects to the magistrates, which strengthen impartiality in their work, and thus avoid loaded dice.

“Today, the order to assign a lawsuit and present the draft sentence is defined by digital lottery. This avoids any suspicion that there were loaded dice at the time of turning a trial, strengthening citizen confidence in the Court ”, he maintains.

jorge.monroy@eleconomista.mx

kg