Meanwhile, the three main parties – the National Action Party (PAN), the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), and the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) – united in order to keep newcomers out of the electoral arena. They evicted the Federal Electoral Institute (IFE) directors, who organized last year’s presidential vote; strengthened the ban on independent candidates; made it practically impossible to create new parties; and established a series of arbitrary, quasi-Stalinist restrictions on the content of campaign advertising, speeches, and exchanges among candidates.