Translated by Rachel Alexander
The president of the General Council of the National Electoral Institute (INE), Lorenzo Córdova, recognized the weaknesses of our democracy but did not say how the INE, a tamed, submissive and irrelevant institution, would fight them.
Córdova is an optimistic administrator, one of those who always emphasizes the friendly side of elections and democracy. As a result, his frankness in responding to questions by Carlos Acosta Córdova of Proceso (April 2, 2016) was surprising.
"The democratic institutions of the state," he said, have very little credibility. "Society's dissatisfaction and lack of confidence is so great" that it would be "very easy for authoritarian instincts to take root."That said, he boasted that there would be elections in 2015 in troubled states (referring to protests in Guerrero and Oaxaca).
He put forward a diagnosis without giving a protocol for healing it. He conducted himself like some doctors in a public hospitals who tell patients: "Ma'am, your cancer is one of the difficult ones, but the specialist will attend to you within a year. But don't get discouraged - give it your best!" Signs that the elections are being affected by political and criminal violence, vote buying and the dirty war are all around, and Cordova and the INE only care that the ballot boxes are in place and the votes are counted. A similar attitude is seen in Fepade [the Special Prosecutor for Attention to Electoral Crimes] and the Electoral Tribunal [special court for trying electoral crimes].
The gap between diagnosis and reality became clear because the interview coincided with a large investigative report on "How to Hack an Election" in Bloomberg Businessweek magazine (March 31). Jordan Robertson, Michael Riley and Andrew Willis retold the story of a genius in manipulating social networks and exploiting vulnerabilities created by advanced technologies. Andrés Sepúlveda is incarcerated in a high-security Columbian prison because he was caught intercepting - for a client - Colombia´s peace negotiations in Havana and for hacking the president. His goal was "to end the peace process," according to Semana [a Columbian news and opinion magazine published in Bogotá], August 23, 2014.
The Bloomberg Businessweek journalists went deeper into the subject and found Sepúlveda's specialty was serving candidates; "my work," he told them "was to wage dirty war and psychological operations, dark propaganda, rumors - in the end, the entire dark side of politics." His most important job was to manipulate social networks secretly for three years in favor of Enrique Peña Nieto. He thinks that the 2012 election was "one of the dirtiest campaigns in Latin America in recent years." He also explained how he torpedoed Enrique Alfaro and Gerardo Priego's campaigns for governor of Jalisco and Tabasco, respectively, in 2012.
I recommend reading the long article. It's a solid piece of investigative journalism that deserves more institutional attention than it's received. Los Pinos [The Pines, presidential residence and offices] simply denied it in a short and flimsy press release which closed with an unverified opinion: "The triumph of our presidential candidate is due, only and exclusively, to the free, informed and majority support of the Mexican electorate." The INE barricaded itself in silence, but council member Benito Nacif acknowledged that "the INE has not designed a shield to prevent hacking and campaign espionage." The special prosecutor and the Electoral Tribunal turned a blind eye.
"I have proof of everything, absolutely everything. I have documents, technical means, technical records, calls, documentation, information, videos, audio ... I have everything."With a good list of questions and a bit of will, in the worst of cases we would better understand the role of the dirty war in Mexican elections.
For now, what's certain is that the INE is timid, the special prosecutor has become an ostrich who buries his head in the sand, and the Electoral Tribunal wanders in the world of silences and solemnity. The parties and the powers-that-be removed the concrete from an unfinished prison [i.e. undermined independence and effectiveness of the three electoral agencies]. The three prisoners could get away, but they use their fears to paint imaginary bars. They feel safe there. And our democracy? Let it fend for itself!
Maura Álvarez Roldán contributed.
Reforma only allows subscribers to access its articles online.
*Sergio Aguayo is a professor of Political Science at The College of Mexico and a leading political analyst and commentator in Mexico. He also teaches at Harvard. He is president of Propuesta Cívica. Dr. Aguayo obtained his Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins University. His thesis was on the history of Mexican-U.S. government relations in the twentieth century, published as Myths and MisPerceptions: Changing U.S. Elite Visions of Mexico. His latest book is Remolino: El México de la Sociedad Organizada, los Poderes Fácticos y Enrique Peña Nieto [The Mexican Enigma: The Mexico of Organized Society, De Facto Powers and Enrique Peña Nieto]. @sergioaguayo