The Federal Electoral Tribunal (TEPJF) on Tuesday finally rejected the official complaints lodged by PAN against the July 4 gubernatorial elections in Veracruz, as well as a separate complaint by PRD-Convergencia, and thus finally validated the victory of PRI's Javier Duarte de Ochoa. The opposition parties had protested against alleged infractions such as the theft of electoral ballots, illegal diffusion of a poll, promotion of electoral propaganda outside of the allotted time period, and failure to transmit a debate between the main candidates. Yet perhaps gravest were the charges that outgoing governor had used public resources to promote Duarte and other PRI candidates. Ahead of the elections, tapes were released by PAN where Governor Fidel Herrera seemingly ordered the state apparatus to work for PRI's victory. Herrera notably responded by rejecting the tapes' authenticity, yet at the same time accusing PAN and the PGR, the attorney general's office, of illegal wiretapping.
Yet TEPJF rejected all the arguments, including those based on the tapes, as the electoral court found this apparent strong evidence to be "inadmissible" as it had been obtained illegally.
Moreover, in an echo of 2006, the court did accept the argument from PAN's Miguel Angel Yunes that the Veracruz electoral authorities had refused to accept various complaints from the candidate, such as dirty campaigns that linked Yunes to corruption and pederasty- yes, no joke! - yet the TEPJF concluded there was no evidence that this filthy "swift-boating" was linked to the ruling PRI.
It is the law, and Miguel Angel Yunes is not exactly a saint when it comes to electoral transgressions himself, yet it pains me to see that Herrera got off completely scot free with his one, handing this important state to PRI ahead of the 2012 presidential election.
