López Obrador, during a morning conference in December 2020. Handout.
/ Reuters
The fine line between news and electoral campaign is presented in Mexico every day at seven in the morning in the National Palace.
The National Electoral Institute (INE) has notified the president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, that he will have to suspend the full transmission of the daily morning conferences as of April 4, when the campaign begins.
The president usually speaks in
La mañanera
–As the president's daily meeting with the press is known– about the progress of his government's projects, the news in some of the secretariats and, incidentally, it serves to launch some criticism of politicians from other parties and the press.
The conference is broadcast in its entirety on public television, YouTube and the government's social networks.
Some private media choose to broadcast some fragments live, and so all of Mexico wakes up with coffee in hand and a dose of presidential information.
The INE notice has opened a controversy between the president and the independent body that organizes the elections.
López Obrador has criticized the decision of the INE and assures that it is "an act of censorship, an offense and an attack on freedom."
The measure is established in Article 134 of the Constitution and establishes that public servants cannot influence electoral campaigns while in office, since they are managing public resources.
The president, from the highest pulpit in the country, has warned that he will question the measure in court and has also winked at his followers: “I take the opportunity to call Mexicans to give their opinion on whether it is okay for the INE to silence us , if it is good that in Mexico our country cannot speak the president, he cannot report, "he commented at the conference on Tuesday.
The INE has clarified that the measure assumes that
the mornings will
no longer be broadcast from April 4 to June 6, when the midterm elections are held in which 15 governors and 500 federal deputies will be elected.
This implies that López Obrador can continue holding the morning conferences, but that they cannot be reproduced in full and live by the media and the Government.
Faced with López Obrador's remarks, the president of the INE, Lorenzo Córdova, has defended the body's decision.
“No one has proposed to suspend or cancel them.
The criteria in force and that have been applied in the last two years establish that during electoral campaigns the entire transmission of these conferences must be suspended, since it is considered that when they promote the achievements of the Government, they constitute government propaganda whose dissemination is prohibited during campaigns by our Constitution, ”he said in a video on Twitter.
The suspension was already made in 2019 when some States held local elections, then only
La mañanera
stopped broadcasting
in Aguascalientes, Baja California, Durango, Puebla, Quintana Roo and Tamaulipas.
In May 2019, López Obrador himself approved the measure: "I agree that conferences where there are elections are not broadcast (...) there is no problem that they are suspended because it can be reported in another way," he said. so.
The tension between the president and the INE occurs at the same time that López Obrador has questioned the existence of independent bodies that monitor the tasks of the Government and when he prepares to make a reform initiative to eliminate and substantially modify some of them , argued a saving to public finances.
So far it is unknown which organisms could be affected.
The INE has also made observations to the president based on his comments in
La mañanera
.
There are those of December 23, 2020, where López Obrador criticizes the coalition of the PRI, PAN and PRD parties for this year's elections.
"What matters to them is that we do not have a majority representation in the Chamber of Deputies," he said.
After his words, the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) - to which he belonged and with which he won the elections to govern Mexico City in 2000 - filed a complaint with the INE for giving his political opinions since the inauguration of President.
On December 31, 2020, the electoral authority called the president's attention.
Since then, the color of Morena, López Obrador's party, disappeared from the stage at the National Palace and was replaced by the green of the Mexican flag.
López Obrador has celebrated more than 500
mornings
since December 2018
, which last an average of two hours.
The president defends that it is an act of transparency by his government, given how unprecedented it is that a head of state stands every day with a microphone to answer questions.
However, the conferences have shown in recent months a shift in the quality of the questions answered by the president.
A good part of the participations comes from
youtubers
who raise issues to publicize the government agenda and to a lesser extent issues of public interest or controversy are addressed.
There is the case of Paul Ernesto Velázquez, a
youtuber
who goes to the National Palace accredited as a journalist, and who this Tuesday registered as a candidate of the Government party for a multi-member deputation;
or Carlos Pozos - known as Lord Molecula - who with striking outfits has increased his popularity on social networks and takes advantage of his participation to praise López Obrador.
The conferences have adopted a predictable format in which each day of the week the president invites his collaborators to discuss the issues of their portfolios.
For example, on Mondays, without fail, the head of the Consumer Prosecutor's Office, Ricardo Sheffield, shows up to show fuel prices across the country.
The production of the conferences has evolved and their routine now also includes live connections: the most recent to the Mexico City airport to see the landing of a plane with a shipment of covid vaccines.
Due to the coronavirus pandemic, the capacity of the conferences has decreased significantly.