• Elections Correos finally accepts 5,814 postal votes in Melilla, almost 10% of the census
  • Security Melilla is shielded on 28-M after the fraud campaign: one policeman for every 83 voters
  • Politics The Government ensures "total transparency and maximum guarantee" in the 28-M after the controversy over vote buying

Melilla has been one of the epicenters of the campaign that will lead to the polls today. The scandal of alleged vote-buying has shaken the entire country, but the effects of it are felt above any other site in the autonomous city, which today could register a new record number of abstentions following the annulment of more than half of the votes made by mail. At 14 p.m. it had dropped 0.53 points in the autonomous city and its participation rate was the lowest in the whole country, since only 25.71% of citizens with the right to vote had gone to the polls.

The percentages of previous appointments show that Melilla, in itself, is a territory with very low participation rates: in recent years (63.4% in 2019 and 60.79% in 2015) the numbers had increased slightly compared to the first decade of the twenty-first century, when participation was always around 57%.

Now, the approval of only 49% of the postal vote requested in these elections (5,814 votes, out of a total of 11,727 applications), significantly reduces the number of Melillenses who on this occasion can exercise their right and opens the door to the percentage of participation falling to historical lows in the autonomous city, never registered even in any autonomy throughout the democratic period.

The suspicions of "large-scale fraud" that ended up exploding the case of buying and selling votes that splashes one of the parties of the Government of the autonomous city, Coalition for Melilla (CpM), started precisely from the high rate of applications made this year to exercise the vote by mail. The data tripled compared to 2019 to more than a fifth, on a census of 60,000 people, the Melillenses who opted for this modality for 28-M. Now, the cancellation of a good part of these applications lowers to usual levels the electoral participation by mail in Melilla.

All this at a time of some tension in the autonomous city, which goes to the polls today with the still recent memory of the assault on the border fence with Morocco last June, almost a year ago, and with the shadow of Rabat hovering over the alleged irregularities known this last week, as denounced by a good part of the political parties, which have even raised their concern to Brussels.

In any case, the low participation and misgivings about the electoral processes in Melilla are issues that go hand in hand in the autonomous city for decades. In fact, there were already in the past elections marked by the shadow of "pots": in the general elections of 1989 it was even necessary to repeat the elections after the deputy who won the PSOE for Melilla was challenged by the PP to find irregularities in the census. In 2007, for its part, it was the PSOE that took to court a possible fraud of law in the regional elections that splashed directly to the dome at that time of the PP in the autonomous city, but the issue was finally dismissed.

Now, given the uncertainty and confusion that reigns in a city shaken a few days before the elections by this new scandal, the State security forces and bodies will be responsible for ensuring compliance and transparency of the electoral process in Melilla. The troops have increased by 7% compared to the previous electoral call to achieve a record armor: 594 agents will protect the polling stations and the streets of the autonomous city, which is one for every 83 voters. At the national level, the deployment is also unprecedented: more than 99,000 troops throughout Spain, which is the largest security operation executed in our country ahead of an election day.

Meanwhile, the Government guarantees the transparency of the process and ensures that the various cases of buying and selling votes detected in recent days will not affect either the system or the confidence of citizens. The Secretary of State for Communication, Francesc Vallès, predicted yesterday that both in Melilla and in the rest of Spain people "will participate as they have always done".

  • Melilla
  • Justice
  • Articles Vicente Coll

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