PAN defends IEEQ management of Gerardo Romero amid INE contracting scandal, Digi Mart USA News (Querétaro, Mexico): Martín Arango, the state president of the National Action Party (PAN) in Querétaro, defended the Electoral Institute of the State of Querétaro (IEEQ) and especially the administration of Gerardo Romero. His remarks came after the scandal involving former National Electoral Institute (INE) president Guadalupe Taddei and a series of suppliers.
Following reports that the local electoral body also granted contracts to companies linked to the controversy while Romero Altamirano was its council president, Arango said that no IEEQ administration has so far been accused of acts of corruption. He added that, should irregularities be detected, the chair of the Procurement Committee during Romero’s term was María Nieto Castillo, sister of Santiago Nieto, now Morena’s virtual candidate for governor of the state.
Arango García also denied that Romero Altamirano, now secretary of Urban Development in the government of Felipe Fernando Macías, had been close to PAN governments while leading the IEEQ. He explained that Romero met the two-year waiting period required by law before taking public office after heading an electoral body.
The party leader described the INE scandal as the most serious crisis since the party’s founding and insisted that Guadalupe Taddei was a councilor with sympathies toward Morena. He called on Morena to “assume its political responsibility” for the matter and urged the federation to audit past administrations of the institute.
Arango also asked that the reform to Article 45 of the General Law of Electoral Institutions and Procedures be reversed, so that appointments to executive directorates again require the indispensable consensus of a majority of the institute’s councilors. He further requested that the next president of the General Council be an independent profile.
