Friday, August 20, 2010

Where the hell is Blake? Valdés: IFE has "full authority" to investigate complaints.

Head of the Federal Electoral Institute, Leonardo Valdés, after receiving a legal complaint from the national branch of the PRD, notably declared that the institute has "full authority" to investigate the claims that the church is breaking the COFIPE, or federal electoral law of constitutional rank, as well as constitutional articles regarding the role of religious organizations in Mexico. As such, IFE has the authority to pass on the case to the interior ministry, should it find the church guilty of constitutional transgressions. 


Yet the million-peso question is: Where the hell is José Francisco Blake Mora?
We must not lose sight of the fact that it was the PGR, or the national Attorney General-Prosecutor, that complained the alleged unconstitutionality of the gay weddings to the Supreme Court in the first place. As is now well known, the Supreme Court dismissed the Calderón-instigated complaint, and the issue is now blowing up in the president's face, chiefly due to the virulent and very public reactions of the church. While it is likely too much to ask that the president would take responsibility and ask the church to cool its tempers, one would certainly expect that the interior minister would make some kind of statement. 


Yet Blake's silence on this hugely important issue, which involves the defense of the constitution, the secular state, and Mexico's legal and democratic institutions, is, if a cliché is allowed, absolutely deafening. 

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