The Central Electoral Board (JEC) has dismissed the claim filed by the party Movimiento por la Unidad, Descolonización e Independencia del Pueblo Canario (Movimiento UPC), which requested changing the name of the left-wing coalition Unidad del Pueblo Canario (UPC), made up of Nueva Canarias, IU, Sumar and Podemos, considering that both were too similar.
The representative of Movimiento UPC, an independentist and left-wing group with a presence in Canarias, asked the arbitration body to examine a possible violation of article 46.4 of the Organic Law on the General Electoral Regime (LOREG), understanding that the name of the coalition resembles too closely that of its party.
That provision establishes that the registration of candidacies must be carried out with names, acronyms or emblems that do not generate confusion with those commonly used by other legally registered political organizations.
"NO RISK OF CONFUSION"
However, the Electoral Board has rejected the complaint by concluding that the questioned name does not infringe said article, since "there is no apparent risk of confusion for voters".
Likewise, it notes that, according to the data from the Register of Political Parties, the Movimiento por la Unidad, Descolonización e Independencia del Pueblo Canario is registered together with, at least, two other parties that also incorporate the term 'Unidad' in their name, in addition to several groups that include the words 'Unión', 'Unidos' or other similar expressions in the different co-official languages.
In this line, the electoral body recalls that the case law of the Constitutional Court has established that words with a generic character, as is the case with 'Unidad', "do not authorize their exclusive appropriation by a political group", and that the same criterion applies to the mention of the 'Pueblo Canario'.