On its July 2nd session, just a year before the Presidential elections where Enrique Peña was hailed as the victor, the General Council of the Federal Electoral Institute (IFE) delayed the discussion of fines arising from expert opinions presented by the Auditing Unit of revenues and expenditure of 2012 political campaigns. According to these documents, the imposition of sanctions to political parties for approximately 394.3 million pesos, derived from irregularities of various kinds, was envisioned. Beyond fines that might prescribe and, of course, controversy generated by the criteria applied to determine them, the taxing regime of Mexican political campaigns will once again come into question. On that basis, it might be a good opportunity to (re)consider less sophisticated but more effective and equal rules.
The current regulation is inoperative in a healthy democracy because it’s a door that leads to the unequal use of public resources, particularly with the totally legal possibility of expense apportionment (used by PRI with great success in order to lighten the tax burden over the campaign of its Presidential candidate). On the other hand, political parties cherish more the immediate benefit of investing money at the time of the campaign – even when it exceeds the stipulated limits – rather than the cost of the sanction that will be imposed afterwards, especially when it occurs months or years after the Electoral Tribunal has validated the election (and, consequently has no effect on its result). One good example is that the huge fine received by PRI after the 2000 elections due to the “Pemexgate” – worth a billion pesos, the highest recorded – didn’t persuade it from reoffending, even with the appropriate measures (if anything, it might get a fine of approximately 150 million pesos, considerably lower and with a better cost-benefit balance than ten years ago).
In Mexico, verifying the campaign expenses is not simple at all because it’s difficult to discern when an event, pamphlet or political paraphernalia benefits one or more candidates. With this situation in hand, it was established that expenditures will be allocated to campaigns through a mixed rule of apportionment that assigns half of the total amount in equal parts to all recipients and the other half would be assigned according to a rule previously established by each party. As a consequence, parties that have carefully read the rules of the game might benefit from a good administrative team that can establish a favorable apportionment and with some accountability expertise, to use the proportionality to allocate expenses among many candidates even when clearly the biggest beneficiary will be just one.
As of now, the scandal generated by the coalition of left-wing parties that nominated López Obrador for the Presidency will continue, especially after the possibility of sanctioning them for over 145 million pesos due to the exceeding of campaign limits is still an issue. In case the sanction does happen it would be a result of the clumsy use of a legal framework that was approved by them, not an injustice case. It’s true the scheme of scrutinizing electoral resources favors the accounting abilities and does little in guaranteeing equal campaigns. Nevertheless, judging how right or wrong did the political parties play is not a faculty of IFE nor any other institution, but designing rules that may be complicated and pernicious certainly is.
The problem is exacerbated if one considers that the very same parties have approved rules for financing campaigns that in no way do they pretend to comply with. In that way, we end up with a hybrid financing system (both public and private) and with rules that make easy to cover the use of resources, its source of funding and the exact amounts. In one word, the country suffers from all vice: from those electoral systems that exclusively depend from public financing (most of European ones), those who depend almost exclusively from private financing (the U.S.) and with the addition of a regulation framework that nobody intends to abide. It’s time to simplify the rule and make them more transparent: at least that would allow us to know who finances who and why.
CIDAC
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