Electoral campaign begins without monitoring

Ecuadornews:

The electoral campaign for the sectional elections and for the election of the Participation Council (Cpccs) begins today, with inconclusive processes. One of the important delays occurs with the awarding of the contract for monitoring the propaganda.

In the portal of the Public Procurement Service (Sercop) the monitoring process is suspended. In the attached documents, to carry out the reverse auction, the reference budget for the awarding is not detailed. Among the justifications for the tender, the technical areas of the CNE warn that the institution does not have the necessary technological infrastructure to “support” the monitoring process for the proselytizing campaign, which will run until March 21.

Through this tender, the CNE planned to control the propaganda, collect evidence of the commission of electoral infractions and obtain daily and weekly reports of the monitoring carried out on each candidate. Two offers were submitted for the award of the monitoring.

However, the partners of one of the firms that applied for what would be listed as “unfulfilled contractors” in other contractual processes. For the monitoring, the awarded company had to monitor the proselytizing publicity in national, provincial and cantonal media.

In the case of Galapagos, an exception was made. Only in that province, the Provincial Delegation of the CNE will be in charge of the follow-up. For the remaining 23 provinces, “alerts” should also be reported in the case of 13 types of infractions identified by the CNE. The most important infractions are the public entities publicity without CNE authorization code, ‘spots’ that induce violence, videos in which children appear or propaganda that uses images of a person who is not candidate.

José Cabrera, counselor of the CNE, said that on February 1 the Sercop was asked to lift the suspension of the process, so that the auction could be carried out. The official recalled that last December already “fell” a first bidding process. On that occasion, suppliers were not qualified. “We hope that the auction can be completed by Wednesday. Maybe it could be before, “said Cabrera.

Regarding the electoral promotion fund, Cabrera said that approximately USD 35 million will be allocated to finance the campaign of the different candidates. Another inconclusive process is the qualification of candidacies for the sectional elections. In principle, 80 281 candidates were registered for the different dignities that will be chosen on March 24.

This process has not been completed, since the Contentious Electoral Tribunal still has 21 pending appeals to be resolved. Yesterday, that collegiate body had to substantiate six causes related to candidacies. This was stated by Joaquín Viteri, president of the TCE.

The magistrate did not rule out more appeals, even after the campaign began. Viteri clarified that all applicants with objections, challenges or appeals, cannot yet be considered as firm candidates. Due to this situation, the CNE still cannot calculate the specific amounts for electoral promotion. The reason: that value is obtained among the total number of candidates for a dignity, according to each circumscription.

Spokesmen of the CNE assured that for the hiring of propaganda, through the system of strips, only the candidatures that are already firm will be taken into account. That is, those that have already exceeded all review resources.

Yesterday, it was planned that the CNE report the start of the election campaign, through a national chain, scheduled for 22:00. In the video, the prohibitions for the candidates would be informed. In addition, until yesterday they had to produce the ‘spots’ and radio spots to promote the 43 candidates to the Cpccs. The awarded company made the recordings for three days.

Another issue that remained pending is the possibility of including digital media for electoral promotion. On December 18, the CNE Plenary resolved to include these portals for the promotion. However, counselor Luis Verdesoto accuses the other directors of “blocking this initiative”. (I)

Source: https://www.elcomercio.com/actualidad/campana-electoral-monitoreo-elecciones-comicios.html