Lorenzo Cordova doesn’t know the Mexicans don’t trust him anymore

In an interview with OpinionLorenzo Cordova, adviser to the President of the National Electoral Institute (INE) of Mexico, said his priority before stepping down from his position in April 2023 is “maintaining the credibility of the institution because it is earned day by day and can be very lost.” easily.”.

I immediately asked myself, what to trust?

What he didn’t really realize is that millions of Mexicans don’t trust the heads of the INE, especially Córdoba and adviser Shiro Murayama, to hold clean and transparent elections; Since at least 2006, when the then IFE (now INE since 2014) announced PAN candidate Felipe Calderón as the winner in an election marked by ballot count irregularities and protests registered throughout the day.

Regarding these elections, the documentary Fraud: Mexico 2006 reveals that Felipe Calderón’s son-in-law was hired to manage the vote count database for said electoral process.

“Haiga it looked like Haiga was,” Calderon replied to the TV channel, questioning his “triumph”. Then-candidate Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) has always maintained that there was fraud and irregularity, both during the campaign period and in the 2006 elections. Important intellectuals such as Lorenzo Meyer and Carlos Monsivais have always criticized the clarity of the process.

Due to the small electoral gap between Calderón and López Obrador, supporters of the PRD – the party of which the incumbent was a member at the time – demanded a “vote by vote, box by box” recount, but the electoral court said the demand was unacceptable. , while the IFE declared Calderón the winner. Immediately, the new president declared a “war on drugs”, which was not stopped and led to the death and disappearance of hundreds of thousands of people in the country.

As early as 2018, Roberto Madrazo, PRI candidate in 2006, stated that in that year’s elections, López Obrador was the candidate who won on his electoral lists. He stressed that if the IFE had done the requested count, AMLO would certainly have won.

In the 2012 elections, the MONEX Commission of Inquiry, made up of the Chamber of Deputies, showed that at the time candidate Enrique Peña Nieto (EPN) had exceeded the campaign spending limit by 14 times, but the IFE did not seem to find

Years later, the National Electoral Institute discovered a new company that illegally delivered one billion four hundred million pesos to the EPN campaign during the 2012 election process, but they were not reported. At the time, INE simply sanctioned the PRI for failing to report the 16 million pesos. This does not include the accusation by Emilio Lozoya against Luis Videgaray and EPN of illegal transfer of one billion pesos from the Odebrecht company, another illegal act, but from which INE seems to have disappeared overnight.

In the 2018 election, when AMLO ran for the third time, although there were fraud attempts, a large number of voters who came to participate, and EPN’s non-participation in a fraud attempt to win a PRI or PAN candidate, these were two of the elements mentioned for which INE did not could do nothing to prevent Lopez Obrador from reaching the National Palace.

This was not the case in the State of Mexico in 2018, where the candidate Delfina Gomez of the National Renaissance Movement (Morena) received a 2-1 support over the strongest opponent, but in the end they gave the victory to Alfredo Del Mazo of the PRI.

Analyst Alfredo Jalife-Rame called Córdoba an enemy of democracy for boycotting the latest 2021 popular poll, in which he did little to nothing to encourage people to vote and placed fewer boxes than those used in the general election. people were unable to vote.

Another recent development pointing to the unreliability of INE was the removal of 49 Morena candidates due to irregularities in their campaign spending, while Samuel Garcia, a Movimiento Ciudadano candidate in Monterrey, was allowed to continue until victory and was simply fined for receiving donations from millionaires illegally.

As if that weren’t enough, the INE refused to take a pay cut as mandated by the Constitution: no public official can earn more than the President of Mexico; Cordova and dozens of directors earn far more than the president, some three times as much.

On the other hand, in recent months, journalists and communicators who criticize opposition to the current administration have been subject to fines and penalties. One such case was that of the journalist Miguel Arsate, who asked the president in the morning of December 2020 about the unification of the three parties PRI, PAN, PRD; The PRD complained and INE investigated the communicator, going as far as asking the Internal Revenue Service (SAT) for his tax information to see if he received money from any party for the questions.

In similar situations, but harassed, 4T-inclined journalist Alina Duarte reported on her social media that INE staff came to her home several times to question her about what she posts on her social media.

While Eric Gutiérrez, director of SinLinea.mx, is being accused of “gender violence” for simply responding to a tweet from Morena MP Andrea Chavez who was responding to a PRD MP’s tweet.

According to Gutiérrez, the PRD deputy posted on her networks that the Foundation for Economic Culture (FCE) should not promote reading. Gutiérrez responds to Chávez with reference to the PRD MP’s tweet that “they are afraid to have educated and informed people.” For this reason, he has to pay fines, attend classes and is forced to publicly apologize for 15 days on his networks with a text that INE herself will write. In addition, Gutierrez will have three years to register in the register of persons found guilty of gender-based violence.

As if that weren’t enough, this week the Córdoba councilor appeared in some texts with Alejandro Moreno Cárdenas (Alito), President of the PRI, where he exchanged political favors with the controversial PRI leader accused of illicit enrichment by the Campeche prosecutor’s office.

With all of these situations and controversies that the INE consultant has been involved in, and there are many more, to say that his priority this past year was “strive to maintain the credibility of the institution” is ridiculous for Mexicans who are looking for true democracy, not what the electoral system established by the neo-liberal regime continues to operate until 2018.

This Thursday, Córdoba will deliver the keynote “Mexico Where You Are: The Growing Importance of Mexican Voting Abroad” to kick off the next issue leala, Spanish Book Fair and Literary Festival in Los Angeles.

Agustin Durand is the local editor for La Opinion in Los Angeles. @agustinduranLA – [email protected]