Valladolid (EFE).- The PSOE, through its Organization Secretary, Santos Cerdán, has denounced before the Central Electoral Board the “use” of the website of the Castilla y León Parliament and the institution’s Twitter account to announce and show the attendance in the middle of the campaign of the president of the Cortes, Carlos Pollán (Vox), to a political act of support for Santiago Abascal.
In its letter, to which EFE has had access, the PSOE has argued that this presence and its subsequent publicity violate the electoral law in development of the “principle of equality of electoral actors and objectivity”, which “directly affects the meaning of the vote of the electors”.
As the PSOE has explained in the document, the electoral law specifies that in an electoral process it is necessary to “avoid the incidence of public powers in electoral campaigns by carrying out institutional campaigns”, something that, in their opinion, also affects the president of the Cortes of Castilla y León despite the fact that there are no regional elections called.
Likewise, the PSOE has alleged that the Central Electoral Board has stressed that the duty of neutrality determines that the public powers must pay special attention during the electoral period so that this communication activity is limited to strictly informative aspects to avoid use of the media. , resources or public tools at their disposal for actions that can induce the sense of the vote.
The facts
On July 18, 2023, and as an electoral campaign act, the national president of Vox and candidate for the Congress of Deputies for the Madrid constituency, Santiago Abascal, participated in an informative breakfast organized by a news agency.
On the institutional website of the Cortes of Castilla y León, in the section devoted to the daily agenda of the Presidency of the Cortes, his attendance at the aforementioned breakfast appears as the first public act of the day of the President of the Chamber.
Likewise, the institutional Twitter account of the Courts of Castilla y León published the agenda of the Presidency of the institution with the use of the logo of the Courts and the image of its president for the act of Abascal, which was later accompanied by another tweet with images of the informative breakfast.
For this reason, for the PSOE, by using the institutional website and Twitter to announce its assistance and explicit support for the act of the Vox candidate, it is “breaking the principle of political neutrality of the public powers, campaigning for them, and thus breaking the equality that should govern between the different candidates”.
All this because, according to the Socialists, Pollán would have taken advantage of the status he holds “it may appear that the Public Administration is supporting a candidacy, a specific political party, in this case, Vox.”
For all these reasons, the PSOE has asked the JEC to declare this fact contrary to electoral regulations; to order the immediate removal of the content; that requires Pollán to refrain from using his status as president of the Cortes for “electoral purposes” and that the corresponding disciplinary proceedings be initiated against him.