i mean, does it really make a difference, is my question. >> thank you. we had a question over here, yeah, right here. >> eric grohol, "sedant "sedante monte real." given the comments mauricio made and your presentation, do we have the old dinosaur repainted or a young dinosaur with a new agenda? >> we had a question from a young man right here in the middle. >> good morning, my name is philip gardner action i'm from the foreign policy initiative. my question also relates to vote buying but from a slightly different angle. how is it possibly acceptable that mr. pena nieto can accede to the presidency when questions remain on youtube saying people paid them to vote for him? >> right. maybe get some feedback from pab row gutierrez on this in a

minute but let's go with these three questions now and then we'll make the transition. joy, do you want to start us off? >> sure thing. first of all, i think this also relates back to mauricio's points about authoritarianism returning to mexico. i think something everyone can sort of be happy about in terms of democracy or the ability of the old pre to return is the fact that the pre does not have a majority in the house or the senate or the congress or the senate, especially the senate this is important because the senate loss six years and the senate acts as a more stogy blockage on the crazies in the chamber of deputies. however, in terms of what we saw about the old pre, well, there are these questions about vote buying, there are questions about the relationship with televisa, there are all sorts of questions about the ability and willingness of the pre to play by the new political institutions that have been growing since the late '90s and strongly into the 2000s, whether

the pre is going to circumvent them, weaken them or learn to play as a divided party and deal with the new political institutions that are supposed to keep mexican democracy strong and i'm thinking of the efe, i'm thinking of the transparency institute, efei, i'm thinking of the supreme court, i mean, there are many. i think one thing that speaks well to all of these points is the fact that the pre does not have a majority in either house, even though it can buy or convince, however you want to, because whatever, either way, it can make a majority, there's no doubt about it. however, these are temporary majorities based on each bill and this makes a huge difference in the terms of the ability predes teamed role and i'll leave it to others. >> on the issue of vote buying, is it important.

one of the things that was discussed throughout the electoral process was if people were allowed to go into the polling booth with their cell phones, photography evidence. this was left to states, a state issue, jurisdiction, and several states in fact banned people from going to the polling booth with it but the majority of them didn't. that's a new, very palpable channel through which you could end up, in fact, receiving what you were promised or not, given evidence. why is this person going to be president if youtube keeps showing all these people saying yeah, here's the card, nappies for the baby, subsidized gasoline. well the law does not say that that is a crime. crime is to burn ballots. crime is to steal ballots, but

the process through which the individual elector, you know, goes through mentally, physically, input and the output, that remains very laxly regulated, so there is widespread evidence that the party at least tried to buy votes, you could just show them your finger and say okay, i'll take anything and everything you give me and then i'll do whatever my conscience says. that's what lopes salvador was telling the people, of course accept all those baskets with basic food, medicine, and then just make up your mind on your own. it's not illegal. believe it or not. old or new dinosaur, this is more a transitional species. it's not the old t. rex by any means. i spoke with a few, not many with a few pri elder statesmen

who think that pena and his team are very cohesive. there's distrust of people around them, even within the pri. many in the old guard feel left out, and this is someone who has been already working. he hit the ground running. he's been governor for six years so he's got a working team, which is younger, mexico based. the elder statesmen are grumbling but there's little i think i can do, particularly if he manages to show leadership and comes across as effective. if that's the case the elder statesmen will want to strengthen him as well. i'll leave it there. >> mauricio? >> i want to say to buy votes, it is prohibited. it is prohibited.

it's a crime, pinal coat and that's probably the problem is that in mexico, as you know, have a very complicated electoral system. it's a broke electowhralh is bu confidence. this is the reason of the design. the point is that every new election gives new reasons to add new rules, so you have a very huge building with a very complicated rules, and every three or six years you add new

rules and you make these to avoid the fraud. there are many ways to make fraud. one of them was the changes on the panel code, and it is absolutely prohibited. it's a crime to give money, to give valuables. i don't know how to valibas -- >> monuments. >> handouts. >> it sounds nice in english. valibas in spanish is a little worse. monuments. >> handouts. >> hand youftouts. >> handouts, that's better, handouts, valibas to buy votes. what's the problem? the problem is that that is not an issue for the effect, for the

institution that goes with the electoral organization. you know, the efe is responsible for the electoral organization as a whole, but not, it is not responsible about the panel issues. the panel issues is the responsible institution for that things is the government. we have an attorney for electoral issues but this attorney is part of the mexican government. so we have a lot of demands that right now the party is trying to turn to try to manage the buying of the votes, but we have to

wait all the judicial process which is not an electoral process, but a judicial process, because it is a crime. so there is not any consequence the criminal things and the electoral things. i guess i am trying to explain this complicated system. the other i think is the moral, the moral approach, and i do agree with you, the moral approach is a big thing in this sort of process. it's just one thing more to say, which is i'm afraid to say that all the parties use the public money and use the power they have to go buy votes.

how can we manage to know exactly the amount of votes that are bought? how can we manage to know exactly, as francisco said before, if there is some people who change the intention of the vote before and after they have money from the parties? how can the electoral institutions manage in terms of legal terms to know exactly where is the border, between the conscious and the sale, selling of votes. it is a big, big problem, and we are knowing of this problem. you are right. we have a very big moral problem

around the political parties in mexico. >> okay. our two panelists want to say something but i'm going to keep you very short because we want to give pab row gutierrez as well a chance. >> i want to quickly defend the prd, something i almost never do and say that under the new leadership of berard and mansera who basically already as we speak putting distance between themselves and lopes salvador, they are the modern left that the prd has needed for 20 some odd years now. they're very conscious that their party is seen as old-fashioned and non-economic and non-modern and they are the ones who in the next couple of years will be sort of drilling the new message of the new prd into voters' minds and so we should definitely wait to see a very strong showing in 2018 and on the electoral reform of 2000, what did you expect was going to

happen when you stop making the parties pay for their media spots? where are they going to spend all that money? they spend the money buying votes. it's no big surprise. you fix one thing, you fix one problem and you cause another problem. >> francisco, real quick. >> very relieved to know that vote buying is a crime in my country, unrelieved to know that absolutely nothing happens whatsoever when this takes place, and as mauricio was saying, this becomes a panel issue, so people can be punished, individuals, but no one knows what happens to the votes they were prosthelytizing there, the votes remain there and that say problem. >> the question is to assess the order of magnitude of vote buying, with more than 50 million voters, i mean, how many votes can be bought? and i could be more concerned

about the linistic practices rather than vote buying because the extent of vote buying in mexico [ speaking in foreign language ] we see governments are extending, are practicing client elistic arrangements, where the p.a.n. or prd or pre in mexico city. this is more extensive than we assume. >> join me in thanking our panel. [ applause ] and we're going to transition right away, i'm going to introduce pablo gutierrez, he's the director of the department of electoral cooperation and monitoring at the organization of american states. they led an electoral observation mission to mexico for these elections that was led

by former colombian president cesar garvidia. pablo was instrumental in this process and i invited him to talk a little bit about their official observation of the election and what they saw and witnessed there. thank you, pablo. >> may i start to say that when i listened of course to the presentations, i'm thinking we have a problem in america, because the same issues in mexico is in el salvador, hondur honduras, ecuador, peru, buying votes or the social programs or the first lady, whatsoever, so we have a big issue in latin america in the electoral system. i want to start saying that i think there is a big difference between the 2006 and the last election in mexico that the

results are not in question in mexico. there are problems in the electoral process, but the results are not in question in mexico, and that's our statement, our last statement in mexico and our electoral mission. this was the first time that we had an opportunity to observe mexico because we need the request of the countries. to date we don't have the possibility to observe countries like the u.s. i hope so, and let me say this, the electoral system in mexico is like a baroqroke cathedral, they have very important rules about campaign financing and rules about the crimes in the penal code or something like that. we don't have, for example, in the whole caribbean, any law

about campaigns, financing campaigns. if i remember well, i think the resolution of the supreme court here in the u.s. that is some crazy things, limits in the financing campaign. like i said we have the same problems in the america. let me start saying some background about this last election. mexico have a long story of suspicious elections. i think we all know that, until the year 2000, the p pre governored mexico and won power through election with certain irregularities, but the democratic process was held back two key issues, one is a series of electoral reform, the last is 2007, that reform started in the

'96 when our reform created the efed, the former electoral institute. the second issue is about the 2006 crisis. of course, this difference between felipe calderon and andre manuelo was less than 1%, 0.4%, and if we look at the cost and the effects of these 2006 crisis, of course, we have these tight results. we have a very practical problem, because there is an agreement between the political parties and stop the transmission of the results, although this, of course this agreement after the stop of the transmission, the pre said no,

we don't sign any agreement, that it's real. and of course, the operating capacity was severely questioned after this election. the third element in the background is the 2007 reform in september, three major parties in the congress approved this big reform. i think it's the biggest reform in the last ten years in the america. argentina made the reform like a year, year and a half, and it's very similar to the mexico reform of the 2006 -- '07, sorry. this reforming induced many changes like for example the new election of the president of the efe and electric of the institute is another issue, the

political parties were not able to buy by themselves time on television on several controls about the media, the newspapers, radio, et cetera, and of course, the private financing was decreasing 85% to stay at 40 million pesos. i think it's very important to talk about some special features of this election. like i said, this 2007 reform is a very important reform, and the main issue that is in the center of this reform is to create condition for electoral equity. for example, they have the agenda, the 2 240u 7 reform increased the quota for the position in the senate and the chamber of deputies to 30% to

40%. transparency, the parties were requested to report regarding their financing as well as information on the process to elect their leaders and propose candidates for issues like political campaign and financing the amount of public financing of party was reduced. parties could only use time in tv and radio signed following 30% to 70% formal, and the vote recount is very important because the definite competition of result and final proclamation of result, this is one of the most important reforms after the 2006 crisis, was the possibility of conducting a final count of the vote at the strict level in certain cases like there's obvious mistakes or new votes. there's a great difference between the first and second vote of candidates, et cetera,

et cetera, and first of all the financing control. they create special unit for the fiscalization of political finances that depends on if -- the second issue in this election is the movement, i think we already talk about it just -- 132 grated at american university, and i think the movement was based around three main points. one is the democratization of the meeting. two, a poll for an informal vote by all mexicans and three the right to be informed about -- sorry, to be informed without any manipulations. of course, if we look for achievement of this movement, i think it's very important to say

that, for example, they get television to broadcast the second debate on the main channel so i think it's very important, and, second, the movement also succeed in a third debate among the presidential candidates. just a final consideration, first, like i said, this is -- this is an election in latin america. we have the same problems, let me say. there's no strongest institution or electoral intation than in latin america. believe me. we have served -- i have the possibility to serve 50 elections the last five years, and that's for real. second, yesterday when the first face of the election. now is the -- now we have a space between today and december for all the problems in the election. i think we have the -- a press

conference yesterday saying that we were going to have all the problems of the election that they have, of course, if they have proof, because i think youtube is not enough in many cases so -- and in the work, we've served a post-electoral period. they will remain in the country to observe the recount in some district in the state of hidalgo in mexico, and let me say this. in a general observation, of course. in the most of the vote recount was complete, on time and following procedures, so there's no procedures, no problem procedures in the recounting the district. second, in the three federal states that we observed, the preliminary results obtained on the election day were in accordance with the recount at

the district level of the three types of election. and, third, and the political parties followed the legal procedures. they followed legal procedures, so any concerns that they have done, they followed the legal procedures. in many cases they said the three main parties, that everything is correct. of course, i don't know if -- if any have any stats or; but i think it's very interesting to see, for example, the -- the claims about the election and the places that they won or that they lose because it's very important, you know. i think it's because we talk about the moral issues, so i think this is very moral. and it's very important to say that if we took the prep and the

recount and the quick count, it's very similar. they have a point, maybe two points of difference in the main candidacy. on just two final questions -- two final issues. one, i think it's very important to modernize the concept of electoral fraud. the electoral fraud, per se, like mexico and most countries understood there's an institutional operation with the goal, of course, of modifying the will of the electoral via, you know, manipulate the electoral system. today we have this, like one of the panelists said, electoral crimes committed by people, group of people. of course, outside the electoral institution i think this is very important because we always have these bad news about the election, but this is the good

news. as an example, for example, about buying the electoral institution must like, i think someone said, for a preventive standpoint, reinforce the right to have a secret vote, and that's the role -- the main role of the fnd in the election. and just the last thing. the base of the system, the electoral system, rests on thousands of citizens that volunteer on election day to administer the election in the voting tables. so the citizens are the -- who really conduct the election, so the only role is to choose them and in the last election they choose them by random and progressively trains to do the best work in the election. i think -- i think this is very

important because it's like to the -- the system is like -- if we have the possibility to split in two halves, we have the institution and the citizens, and the citizens all around the -- the mexico and all around mexico. so when we talk about, like i said, all these issues about buying votes or something, the first responsibility or the first -- the first responsible are the citizens of mexico. thank you. >> thank you, pablo. we have about ten minutes for questions here before we end. i just want going to go over real quickly the whole confusing voting process just for those of you who aren't completely steeped in this, because it is confusing. the night of the election there is what's called a quick count or the prep where the polling booths are reporting in their totals. that's not an official result. that's a preliminary result.

you get that first night. then the following wednesday they oversee the counting of all the totals at the district and local levels, and that confirms or changes those preliminary results. and then there are some challenges, and the parties have presented challenges, and they agreed to recount 60% of the polling places, more or less, if i'm not mistaken, so they have recounted and verified. so now they have certified those results as of yesterday as the final results, and now the parties can challenge legally before the electoral tribunal whether they think there was fraud in any particular polling place or any particular district, so now we're in the third -- third or fourth,

depending on which way you count, it stage depending on how you count it. some asked me what was the difference in the prd's response this time and 2006, and so facts and circumstances as i know, they haven't called for civil disobedience or anything like that. they are still proceeding through the legal challenges that's available to them in -- in the federal electoral law. so that's where we are in a very confusing process for vote-counting, and then the third issue is fraud on voting day and at the ballot booth, but the bigger question that's always in the back of minds of people in mexico is are governments and are parties trying to manipulate the process that leads up to the election before people actually cast the ballots? either by using government resources inappropriately or by