The Other Side of the Electoral Law

Alberto Aziz Nassif wrote yesterday in favor of the controversial electoral reform. The controversy has split the intelligentsia into two factions: Aziz and those who agree with him argue under the banner of the Mexican Association for the Right to Information, while Zuckermann and 14 like-minded colleagues have attempted to sought amparos (a Mexican legal anomaly that delays the action of another party) to block the law's application.

Zuckermann's argument (which I summarize here) is much more reasonable, mostly because he deals with concrete consequences of the law. Aziz, on the other hand, sticks to the abstract: "the reform tries to recover the debate and remove it from the limited logic of the [television] spot;" it "protects fairness as a fundamental value;" and it "protects elections --relatively-- from the domination of the electronic media market."

That sounds like the argument in a grad school Theory of Media Law course. (Does such a course exist? I don't know.) Aziz is rightly concerned about the domination of the airwave by just two TV networks, but the most direct solution is to end Televisa and TV Azteca's duopoly, rather than to severely limit citizens' rights to comment on elections via the country's most important media.