By Enrique Pons Franco
Twitter blocked the account of President outgoing of the U.S, Donald Trump, first temporarily and last Friday, permanently. For the company, the president failed to comply with his politics by inciting violence, rather than to have direct contact with the population, being that it is the leader of one of the most powerful nations in the world.
Politician who currently boasts of being one is obliged to have social networks, and above all, an account of Twitter. For this reason, deputies, senators, mayors, governors, presidents, secretaries of state, candidates, pre-candidates and even applicants, make use of said social network to communicate, be in contact with their followers and also, to report on the activities they carry out as public servers. But, what happens when some of these characters, instead of complying with the obligation to inform, use it to pretend to exercise a false “freedom of expression”, or worse, generate violence? This is when Twitter and the right meet.
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Now, I must tell you that no law requires these characters to have an account in the red social Twitter. However, when they decide to communicate with the public through that electronic means, by sharing information inherent in the performance of their assignment in their personal account, it is evident that they voluntarily assume the consequences (legal, political and of use), given the quality of what they report.
We must be clear that when a politician acting as a public servant uses social networks does not do it to exercise freedom of expression. That is a full and absolute right that corresponds to you as a citizen and not to the government. In this legal equation, politicians are on the other side of the pavement, since, in any case, they are fulfilling a related obligation to report what they do.
In other words, the government is not guaranteed right to freedom of expression (to say what you think). What it has is the obligation to inform, under something that is called in the case of Mexico, as social communication, in fact, there is a little-known and observed law that is called General Law of Social Communication.
You must ask yourself now: then how should report government? In theory it should be very simple. Basically, it should do so by obeying principles such as transparency, maximum publicity, objectivity, impartiality, institutionality, truthfulness, and above all, without trying to influence or intervene in electoral matters.
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What happened in the case of Donald Trump it must be taken seriously by all politicians and world leaders. Anyone who is in public office, using a red social global in scope, and due to its relationship with “public affairs”, it is subject to greater control over its actions than those of us who are not in the exercise of power. Therefore, if a politician decide to use your social networks In order to communicate and interact with you through the publication of information inherent to the actions taken in the exercise of your public office, it is clear that you assume the responsibility of guaranteeing the principles that I mentioned before.
Even in Mexico The Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation has begun to build a doctrine that equates the acts carried out by politicians through Twitter, to those of an act of authority, when they block you, for example. The above, because it violates your rights to information (because you cannot read what it reports), and your freedom of expression (because this digital blockade isolates the public servant from knowing what you say).
For now, we leave it there, as always, thank you very much for reading. Until next week arrives, I’ll wait for you on Twitter as @enrique_pons and on Facebook as Enrique Pons Franco.
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