The Superior Chamber of the Electoral Tribunal of the Judicial Branch of the Federation (TEPJF) gave the green light to the president Andrés Manuel López Obrador to continue promoting his latest book, titled “Thank you”in his morning press conference, since the magistrates considered that prohibiting him from talking about the book would constitute prior censorship.
Xochitl Galvezpresidential candidate of the Fuerza y Corazón por México coalition, denounced President López Obrador before the Electoral Litigation Technical Unit (UTCE) of the National Electoral Institute (INE), for allegedly incurring early campaign acts, misuse of public resources and violation of the principle of equity in the contest with the promotion of his book in the morning conferences. The opposition candidate requested that the dissemination of the material be stopped, however, the electoral authority dismissed the complaint.
In public session, the magistrates Monica Soto Fregosopresident of the Superior Chamber, Felipe Fuentes Barrera and Felipe de la Mata Pizañavoted against the project Magistrate Reyes Rodríguez Mondragón that proposed ordering the UTCE to accept the complaint and analyze the content; instead they confirmed the scrapping of the UTCE.
During the discussion, Judge Reyes Rodríguez explained that the UTCE did not analyze whether the phrases that Xóchitl Gálvez denounced were in violation of electoral regulations, for promoting Claudia Sheinbaumpresidential candidate of Sigamos Hazando Historia (Morena-PT-PVEM) were present in the book, since the electoral authority indicated that a copy of it was not attached for analysis.
“Consequently, the INE, the Technical Unit no longer requested a printed copy or a non-commercial digital version, He simply concluded that he did not have a physical or electronic copy of the book and said he could not corroborate the reported facts at that time.“, said.
Meanwhile, Judge Felipe de la Mata asserted that admitting the complaint would be equivalent to creating a “unacceptable censorship mechanism” because it is not up to the electoral authorities to judge books.
“Are we also going to censor libraries, are we going to burn them like in the 40s or 30s, in Nazi Germany? Our job as electoral authorities in the context of the special sanctioning procedure is not to judge books, but rather propaganda.”
“For these reasons and with the firm conviction that the mere fact of allowing the initiation of a procedure to evaluate the content of a book, in fact and independently of its result, would be to create an inadmissible censorship mechanism, I say this with all due respect, and of course establishing that there can undoubtedly be different opinions,” he said.
In two morning conferences, President López Obrador accused that Judge Reyes Rodríguez was seeking to ban his book as in the inquisition.
“I can’t speak out because they are going to sanction me. Those of the inquisition are very strict and today they are going to decide whether or not to ban the book (“Thank you!”) So I can’t give an opinion,” he said at the press conference on April 2.