MEXICO CITY.- Mexico’s federal electoral court ruled that President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador He committed coercion of the vote and misuse of social programs last year by making their validity conditional on the approval of a package of reforms, but the decision will not entail any sanctions for the president.
According to the ruling released on Thursday, López Obrador violated the principles of “impartiality, neutrality and equity” in the 2023 electoral contest, and “improperly used public resources and social programs” in two of his press conferences, known as “the morning press conferences,” in which he referred to a package of legal reforms that has been called “Plan C,” and the need to achieve a qualified majority in Congress.
The aforementioned conferences took place on May 9 and 11, 2023, in the midst of the campaign for the regional elections in the State of Mexico —in the center of the country— and Coahuila, in the north.
With his actions, the Mexican president “coerced the vote of the citizens” and carried out “personalized promotion and disseminated government propaganda during a prohibited period,” the court said in a statement.
Among the statements by López Obrador that the court used to argue its decision is one he made on May 11, 2023, when he stated that “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,” the president said at that time, referring to the Fourth Transformation, the name he usually gives to his government.
According to the court, López Obrador’s statements “had an electoral impact, since they were calls to vote in favor of one political option and against another, thereby attempting to influence the preferences of citizens.”
In the June 2023 elections, the ruling Morena party won the governorship of the State of Mexico, which for more than 90 years had been under the control of the traditional Institutional Revolutionary Party. The PRI did manage to retain the governorship of the northern state of Coahuila.
The court also found that future president Claudia Sheinbaum was responsible for “violating constitutional principles by making statements related to the president’s comments at a press conference” when she was mayor of Mexico City, a position she held from 2018 to 2023.
Despite the decision, the electoral court established that López Obrador, whose term ends in September, cannot be sanctioned for electoral violations.
In June, the court determined that the president committed political gender violence against opposition senator Xóchitl Gálvez in eight morning conferences in July and August 2023, when she was still a presidential candidate for the June 2 elections.
For years, the opposition has accused the president of using his press conferences to campaign for pro-government candidates and attack his opponents. The accusations intensified during the last electoral process in which Gálvez, who lost the election by an overwhelming majority to Sheinbaum, denounced that there was a “state campaign” in favor of Morena and its candidate.
Source: AP