The Electoral Board of Andalusia has urged the PSOE to stop an advertising campaign through mobile calls aimed at sharing their criticisms of the Andalusian healthcare situation. The measure comes at the request of a citizen who approached the body to report what they understand as a violation of their personal data.
Specifically, the calls contained a recorded message, according to the agreement of the Electoral Board published this Thursday, which began with a simulation of scheduling a medical appointment — “Hello, I am calling you about your next medical appointment,” the recipient heard — to then criticize the state of the public health service in Andalusia: “To inform you that Moreno Bonilla’s PP is privatizing and abandoning public healthcare. There are already more than two million Andalusians on the waiting list.” Finally, the recording urged giving the vote to the PSOE and specified that it was a campaign initiative of the Andalusian socialists: “Only you can fix it. In these elections, vote public healthcare, vote PSOE. This is a political advertisement funded by the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party.”
In its resolution, the Board specifies that the phone number, whether landline or mobile, “is not part of the registration data of voters in the Electoral Census,” which parties receive for sending their electoral propaganda, but it also clarifies that the law allows anonymized calls to be made. “Political parties may contract the making of electoral propaganda by telephone means (among others), without — in view of the documentation in the file and the allegations made by the political party concerned — it being possible to appreciate that any infringement has been committed by it.” It also notes that the calls did not make “express reference to the Andalusian Health Service.”
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However, the Board criticizes the use of the phrase “I am calling you about your next medical appointment” because “it may lead the people who receive it to confusion about the possibility that the call was made from some center of the Andalusian Health Service and, in the case that they are pending to attend a medical appointment, it may generate in them significant distrust and concern about the possibility that their appointment will be attended.” In this case, the resolution continues, “the peace of mind of people regarding the guarantee of their right to health is at stake.”
For that reason, the Board partially accepts the request of the individual citizen, who also asked that the case be referred to the Prosecutor’s Office, to only partially grant the request. Thus, it urges Andalusian PSOE to remove the phrase “I am calling you about your next medical appointment,” although it may continue to disseminate the rest of the message.
