The Central Electoral Board (JEC) has rejected this Thursday Podemos’ request to make available more free spaces for electoral propaganda and to intervene in the debates that RTVE was projecting to organize during the campaign for the general elections on the next day 29.
The purple formation had challenged both the distribution of the advertisement blocks and the plan for news coverage designed by the public radio and television, arguing that in both cases seven of the 31 seats achieved by Sumar in 2023 should be attributed to Podemos, regardless of the fact that only four of those deputies went on to the Mixed Group.
Podemos also demanded that, of the 31 deputies elected in Sumar’s lists, those that it considers “independent” or linked to parties that are now not running should be discounted, and that the coalition’s votes be prorated. However, the JEC emphasizes that “it is not possible” to apply that criterion, since those votes were obtained by the entire slate “without specifying which each political formation obtained”.
The JEC sees a disproportionate and unfair claim
The arbitral body understands that the calculation formulas defended by Podemos constitute “an absolutely disproportionate and materially unjust claim that would harm the rights of the rest of political formations and in particular would curtail those of Frente Amplio.
In addition, the JEC highlights that the changes demanded by Podemos would have a “minimum impact” on the distribution of the free propaganda spaces, since the formation would continue to have the 15 minutes that have been assigned to it.
The Board also rejects Podemos’ appeal to be part of the debate on eight programs of RTVE, arguing that “there is no right of all candidate slates with parliamentary representation to participate” in this type of space organized by the media, since it is these that configure them, taking into account that it may “prove unviable to carry it out with an excessive number of participants”.
It also reminds Podemos that the fact of being the force with the greatest weight within the Mixed Group does not grant it an automatic right to be in a debate in which only the presence of parties with their own parliamentary group is contemplated. “It must be understood as included within the scope of action that corresponds to the medium that organizes the debate the refusal to admit shared participation between Podemos and Frente Amplio,” the JEC insists.
The body also emphasizes that the allotment assigned to Podemos in the RTVE Coverage Plan is based on objective parameters, used in previous electoral processes, and not on criteria that are “arbitrary or discriminatory”.
Consolidated criteria and planned compensations
The Central Electoral Board stresses that, as compensation for its absence from the debates, Podemos is offered a time in interviews “much greater than the one it would correspond to by applying criteria of arithmetical proportionality, to which must be added the news coverage” included in the plan of the public corporation.
Likewise, the JEC dismisses Podemos’ request to intervene in the economic debate with four (PP, PSOE, Vox and Frente Amplio) that 'laSexta' plans to broadcast this Friday, considering that the format respects the legal requirements of proportionality and pluralism.
Both Atresmedia and the JEC itself recall that Podemos joined the Sumar coalition in 2023, whose electoral rights are assumed by Frente Amplio, and they stress that, in any case, compensation for the purple formation is planned throughout the campaign.