Lawyers agree that the President uses works to make government propaganda
The Electoral Code prohibits officials from inaugurating works a month before the election so as not to affect the voter’s intention at the last minute, but President Nayib Bukele has tried to overcome this ban with the trip made last week to the bypass of Freedom and the announcement of the delivery of computers to schools on Sunday night, agree lawyers consulted by the Diari d’Avui.
“They are mouse vivacities that are not an inauguration because there is no ribbon cutting: it is an offense to intelligence,” said former magistrate Rodolfo Gonzalez on the route and subsequent rehabilitation of the new road to La Libertad that made the president last week.
Although González said that he cannot be specific about the electoral legislation, he did recall that when he was a magistrate in the Constitutional Chamber, they declared unconstitutional a decree by former President Mauricio Funes that enabled officials to campaign for the then candidate. President of the FMLN, Salvador Sánchez Cerén, in the winning post of the election in 2014.
The Government began handing over computers to second- and third-year high school students. Photo: Jonathan Funes
For González, Bukele’s intention with the delivery of these works being so close to the elections is prevalence of his position to proselytize.
READ MORE: TSE opens sanctioning process and bans Bukele from doing pre-election propaganda
“The president cannot take away the image that he belongs to a political party. He can describe that these conducts can fit in article 218 of the Constitution, to take advantage of the position to make partisan policy,” he valued.
In the same vein, the constitutionalist lawyer Enrique Anaya.
“Definitely the enabling of a street and the announcement of the delivery of computers are instruments of government propaganda, in my opinion. This is a clear violation of Article 178 of the Electoral Code,” he said. lawyer.
This article states that “During the thirty days prior to the date set for the elections, neither the Government of the Republic, nor the Municipal Councils and other autonomous entities, may publish in any private or state media the contracts, inaugurations of works of national infrastructure or of any other nature that have carried out, that carry out or that project to realize in fulfillment of the provision or of the services of assistance to which is obliged the State “.
In the opinion of Eduardo Escobar, an expert electoral lawyer, this article talks about two conditions, inaugurating works and publishing them, and in this sense he considers that both conditions are violated by enabling bypass.
YOU MAY BE INTERESTED IN: TSE cancels New Ideas spot that hinted at electoral fraud
“There is the publication in which no average payment from the state, I summon the media they arrive and publish the inauguration. In the end the same effect is generated, a work of the state is released in a period prohibited by the choice not to generate undue influence on voters. Bypass is configured as a violation from our point of view, “said the director of Citizen Action.