The Federal Institute of Telecommunications (IFT) filed a constitutional dispute before the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation for the omission by the Executive to propose to the Senate of the Republic the three commissioner candidates that are missing from the regulatory body.
Currently the Institute operates with four commissioners out of the seven it requires , which puts issues of resolutions of barriers to competition at risk, not being able to issue regulatory provisions and they cannot establish guidelines or technical guidelines.
The IFT Commissioner selection process, provided for in Article 28 of the Constitution, establishes that the Federal Executive must choose the candidates from a list sent by the Evaluation Committee (made up of the Inegi and the Bank of Mexico).
However, on March 31, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador rejected the validity of the short lists for IFT commissioners and for the Federal Economic Competition Commission (Cofece), arguing that the list sent by the Evaluation Committee lacks validity, since they were only issued by two of the three members that must integrate.
“From the analysis carried out by the IFT, the omission of selection of the Federal Executive affects the competence of this regulatory body by putting at risk organic powers and essential functions that have been conferred by the Constitution and by law, which affects the autonomy granted by the Constitution and prevents it from exercising, through its highest governing body, the Plenary, each and every one of the powers entrusted to it by the Federal Constitution and by law,” detailed the telecommunications regulatory body. it’s a statement.
Since February 29, 2020, with the end of the term of Gabriel Contreras as commissioner president of the IFT, the institute has operated incompletely . In the first instance, the pandemic paralyzed bureaucratic procedures, slowing down the assignment of new positions within the institute. Adolfo Cuevas temporarily took over the reins of the telecommunications regulatory body, as the commissioner with the most time within the Institute. So the Plenary was left with only six of the seven commissioners that should integrate it and with a lot of obstacles ahead.
In 2021, the IFT also faced the departure of another commissioner: Mario Fromow Rangel , who at the end of his term left the Institute’s Plenary with only five commissioners out of the seven that should be. Five is the minimum necessary for the Institute to operate correctly.
In February of this year, Adolfo Cuevas ended his term as interim president and as commissioner, leaving only four of the seven members required by the Plenary, in addition to having a new interim presidency: Javier Juárez Mojica .
The Telecommunications Observatory (Observatel) also presented in December 2021 an injunction for the government to comply with the issuance of a Universal Digital Inclusion Policy. The resource seeks to comply with the mandate to develop a digital strategy “that guarantees the population its integration into the information and knowledge society
