Mexico City . Even if a candidate has committed pre-campaign acts, they would not, de facto , lose the right to register their candidacy, said Reyes Rodríguez Mondragón , president of the Electoral Tribunal of the Federal Judicial Branch (TEPJF).
No, it's not automatic; each case must be analyzed . The law provides for a public reprimand; so, it depends on the case. In law, there's a principle of proportionality; the sanction must be proportional to the offense
, he explained in an interview.
The law prohibits soliciting votes, positioning oneself as a candidate before the public, or submitting proposals prematurely. Federal pre-campaigns begin on November 20 and conclude on January 18 .
From January 2022 to the first week of October 2023, the Technical Litigation Unit of the National Electoral Institute (INE) received just over 1,600 complaints, and after reviewing and, in many cases, accumulating them, opened 897 files for early pre-campaign and campaign acts.
In the upper chamber, the only dissenter was Janine Otálora, who warned that the internal party processes are a fraud against the law
, because they actually elected their presidential candidate based on different schemes.
The presiding judge, along with five of his colleagues, endorsed the legality of the aforementioned political party strategy: Morena and its allies elected Claudia Sheinbaum as coordinator of the Fourth Transformation defense committees, and the opposition (PAN, PRI, and PRD) elected Xóchitl Gálvez as head of the Broad Front for Mexico. However, as stated, accusations began to arise last year due to early campaign events.
Rodríguez Mondragón reiterated that the TEPJF responsibly chose to set rules
and ordered the INE to issue guidelines and oversee the spending of parties and candidates.
