La Jornada: Editorial
The internal elections of the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD), being held this Sunday with the participation of the National Electoral Institute (INE), has been marked by numerous complaints from the various currents that make up that party and through social networks with respect to alleged attempts to buy or coerce the votes of members.
The current infighting between PRD "tribes" is a recurring phenomenon....The fact that it shows that this party is unable to carry out its election processes cleanly and without its members' multiple allegations of fraudulent activity puts into perspective its great institutional decay. This had a specific starting point in the seedy process of renewal of the PRD leadership that took place in 2008, culminating with the designation of Jesús Ortega Martínez as national party chairman by the Electoral Tribunal [Court] of the Judiciary of the Federation.
From then until now, the PRD has failed to remedy the patronage practices of its various currents and free itself from the bureaucracies embedded in its institutional apparatus. This has prevented it from presenting society with a coherent political project and establishing an attractive image with the electorate, as evidenced in its poor performance in the [mid-term] elections of 2009 and as is likely to happen next year.
With the serious structural distortions from which its suffers, the PRD has not been able to operate democratically in its internal life. The organization, founded in 1989 through the most important confluence of national leftist groups, is unable to provide minimally appropriate institutional functioning, either to its own members or to the traditional electoral strongholds of the left--its sure vote.
To this is added the ideological and political blurring of a party that, in the last political season, decided to align with the politics of the current President through informal arrangements such as the Pact for Mexico. This has not only undermined PRD's strength in those episodes and issues in which it wanted to distance itself from the government, as in the discussion of the energy reform, but has caused it to be perceived by a significant segment of public opinion as a satellite of the party in power.
In addition, allegations of electoral dirty practices by one or more sectors of the PRD are a first test for the new National Electoral Institute that has the responsibility of healing the serious credibility deficit that the now defunct Federal Electoral Insitute suffered after the federal elections of 2006 and 2012 [for not satisfactorily addressing charges of fraud]. It is therefore worrisome that the President of the INE, Lorenzo Córdova, says the agency will not be responsible for any undemocratic behaviors in the PRD election. The truth is that, beyond the INE's participation in today's elections being formally limited to the installation of ballot boxes and the counting of votes, it would send a very negative message to society if it tolerates fraudulent actions in the PRD election. Spanish original