Political parties are a burden

The right to associate with others, in order to take part in political matters in the country, is established in the 9th constitutional article of the Mexican Constitution . The citizens can create national political organizations or even political parties . The relatively young democratic history of the country has seen dozens of them, although they all have gone unnoticed, as EL UNIVERSAL published today.

In the last 27 years , in the national stage ,14 parties have been created and disappeare d in a short time.

Nevertheless, that political pluralism hasn't been gratuitous. It meant an MXN $2 thousand 266 millions expense, paid by public funds or, by the taxpayers, which is the same.

Before the extinction of political parties was regulated, the bast majority disappeared without giving account of their expenses and the assets acquired with public resources increased the leaders' wealth.

Now, with the changes in the legislation, when a political party loses its registration after failing to obtain 3% of the votes , the resources and the assets are returned to the public funds. Unfortunately, in the parties' history there are cases when the organization was created only to use it as a family business , as their members were few, their ideology poor, their proposals and votes scarce . There's knowledge about cases when the leadership of the party is renovated, and the outgoing leader's son or family member was “elected”.

Although they can receive resources from private sources, by law, the parties have access to public resources with the objective of avoiding being manipulated by groups with economic or illicit interests, that want to influence political decisions. This is understandable, but do the parties need the thousands of millions of pesos that are assigned to them each year? In 2017 , which wasn't an electoral year, they received over MXN $4 thousand millions from the INE . In 2018 , the prerogatives will reach over MXN $6 thousand million . In a country with poverty like Mexico , it's acceptable to question the amount of money assigned to the parties , mostly if they refuse to be transparent.

The supervision of the parties' expenses should have taken place from day one, but it's a recent measure.

To have parties with millions of pesos in resources and millions of people in poverty gives the parties' social vision little or no credibility . It's necessary that they show society that they can do more with fewer resources and that they are willing to be held accountable. It's a matter of sensibility.

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