Strange days at Mexico's Federal Electoral Institute, IFE. Relations were already strained with the left given some quite erratic earlier comments from the president of IFE's general council, Leonardo Valdés, and they will not be better after this:
- The IFE president, highly unusually, took on the role as defender of Mexico's polling agencies, lauding them for their methodology and professionalism, despite the obvious poor performance of quite a few of them ahead of this election. This contradicted earlier statements from IFE that IFE had no role to play or nothing to say regarding the performance of pollsters.
- Valdés went on to directly respond to a criticism from PRD's representative, sarcastically pointing out that if the left was so critical of GEA-ISA, which consistently inflated Peña Nieto's real support upwards of 18 or so percent, why didn't it complain about its polls in Mexico City, where the left one? This is a complete non sequitur if there ever was one, on so many levels, and a frivolous question that the IFE head even repeated on two occasions.
Why is Valdés so bent on provoking the left?
Source: Defiende Valdés los sondeos de GEA- ISA y critica al representante del PRD. La Jornada, July 27, 2012.
