Lopez Obrador breaks down campaign spending, and IFE gets hacked

The hacked Wiki page - pinche cabron!

Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO), last year’s leftist candidate for the presidency of Mexico, has responded to concerns raised by the country’s Federal Electoral Institute (IFE), writing a letter that breaks down his campaign spending.

In the letter he attacks the proposed fine against his coalition members for exceeding their spending limits. The coalition consisted of the PRD (Democratic Revolutionary Party), PT (Workers’ Party) and Movimiento Ciudadano (Citizens’ Movement).

"I consider it necessary to clarify in detail the amounts received, the way things were done, and how campaign expenses were checked during my campaign for president,” he wrote.

He added that, according to the law, in advance of the campaign the coalition parties signed an agreement to allocate 50% of public funds directly to presidential campaign spending. This amounted to 223,452,000 pesos.

The resources were all managed through a single account (#70034671344), with the PRD contributing 112,872,000 pesos, the PT 59,049,000 pesos, and the Citizens Movement 51,531,000 pesos.

"It should be clarified that the PRD contributed an additional 5 million pesos, and took on liability of 4,979,000 pesos – all duly documented by contracts and invoices.”

Total spending amounted to 233,430,000 pesos. AMLO claims that all spending was reported and audited on a monthly basis by IFE via the financial arm of the Coalición Movimiento Progresista (Progressive Coalition Movement).

In total, AMLO argued that this brought the coalition 100 million pesos under the spending cap for deputies and senators, as well as for the parties supporting the presidential candidate.

“It's totally unfounded for to IFE hold to its opinion that we exceeded the ceiling prescribed by the campaign law,” said AMLO. “Obviously, all this maneuvering is intended to send a message, to discredit and to manipulate, so that all politicians appear to be the same.”

On a lighter note, the IFE Wikipedia page was hacked yesterday, likely by AMLO supporters (given the nature of the comments).  

The page briefly included a few racy edits such as:

pero siempre dando las nalguitas a los adinerados – colourfully translated as IFE  “always getting fucked up the ass by the rich”.

hacer lo que inche el huevo con el voto de todo pueblo (which in his or her haste was probably intended as “hacer lo que pinche el huevo con el voto de todo pueblo”) – which is basically untranslatable, other to say that IFE has the country by the balls, fucking up the entire vote.

(TE Wilson is the author of Mezcalero, a Detective Sánchez novel.)

Twitter: @TimothyEWilson

Email: lapoliticaeslapolitica [at] gmail [dot] com

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