Some people, including three Supreme Court judges, called it an attempted “coup”. Unsurprisingly, Washington’s fingerprints are all over this.
On Tuesday, Claudia Sheinbaum was sworn in as Mexico’s first female president, and her career is over. After choosing not to invite Spain’s King Felipe VI to his coronation because of his refusal five years ago to apologize for Spain’s colonial excesses in Mexico, Sheinbaum now has to deal with a diplomatic crisis with Madrid.
But the bigger problem is closer to home with the Supreme Court determined to overturn, or at least delay as long as possible, the AMLO government’s most important constitutional reform. And in that effort it can count on the support of the US government.
For the first time, the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation (SCJN) of Mexico has decided to submit changes to the constitution for review. The reform in question involves a radical reorganization of the judicial system and has already passed both houses of the legislature with the required two-thirds majority. It is fiercely opposed by members of the Mexican opposition, law enforcement, big business lobbyists, and the US and Canadian governments.
“The Last” Bullet
Yesterday (Oct. 3), the SCJN approved the appeal of the government’s legal reform plan by eight to three votes. With this decision, the Supreme Court transfers the consideration of the dispute to one of the judges who voted for this decision. The court may also suspend, suspend the amendment of the constitution. Mexican daily currency El Financiero he described the decision as “the last bullet” (interesting choice of words) against current Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s “Plan-C” reforms.
The proposed changes seek to overhaul the way Mexico’s justice system works. Most controversially, judges and magistrates at all levels of the system will no longer be appointed but instead will be elected by local citizens in elections scheduled for 2025 and 2027. Sitting judges, including Supreme Court justices, will have to win the popular vote. if they want to continue working. New institutions will be created to regulate procedures and fight the rampant corruption that has plagued Mexico’s justice system for decades.
This, insists the government of AMLO, is necessary because the two main structural causes of corruption, impunity and lack of justice in Mexico are: a) the absence of true legal independence of the institutions charged with bringing justice; and b) the ever-widening gap between Mexican society and the legal authorities that oversee legal processes at all levels of the system, from local and regional courts to the Supreme Court of Mexico.
There is some truth in this. And making judges accountable for elections may go some way to solving these problems, but it also jeopardizes judicial independence and impartiality, which is already very thin. As some critics argue, since Morena’s AMLO party already controls the bureaucracy and the judiciary, there is a risk that it will end up controlling all three branches of government – like the Institutional Revolution Party, or PRI, which has held without interruption. power in the country for 71 years (1929-2000).
That said, as I wrote in my previous piece on this issue, the AMLO government has the legal right to carry out these reforms, enjoys the support of almost two-thirds of the Mexican public in doing so, and is following established legal procedures.
Intense Conflict
Yesterday’s session at the High Court saw an unusual clash of opinions among the sitting judges. Supreme Court President Norma Piña said the law is clear that its members can analyze actions that may violate judicial independence. Although the majority in favor of the case said that the Court has not taken a “substantial” decision about the changes, three judges voted against the decision and warned that it is a “coup”.
Judge Lenia Batres Guadarrama said the Court is “arrogant about the power it does not have”, such as the power to submit changes to the Constitution approved by the Legislature for review. By doing so, he said, it violates “the principle of constitutional supremacy, and the separation of powers and the Rule of Law of the Constitution”:
“The SCJN will be carrying out… a real coup by trying to put under the control of the constitution the work of the reforming power, which participates in the process of constitutional reform in the affairs of the Ministry of Justice in strict accordance with the provisions of Sec. 39 of the Constitution, which states that all public power comes from the people and is established for their benefit”.
Another judge, Yasmín Esquivel Mossa, described the proposed court decision as “a prelude to the overthrow of the constitution”:
“The Court wants to ignore the power to change the Constitution. It wants to create an unacceptable constitutional problem, sending a message that this Court can reject the constitutional amendment through the administrative procedure provided in the organic law of the Judicial Branch of the Federation. “
The president of the Senate Gerardo Fernandez Norona, a member of Morena’s ruling party, said that the Supreme Court “proved its party status, it considers itself as a great power, above the legislative power, the executive power and, above all, the sovereign power: the Mexican people.”
US fingerprints
After passing both houses of the legislature in mid-September, the AMLO government’s proposed reform plan should have been done and dusted by now. But a number of powerful stakeholders in the country, including business representatives, legacy media and opposition parties, are determined to destroy it, and they have chosen the perfect time to do so: within the first few days of Sheinbaum’s mandate.
Unsurprisingly, Washington’s fingerprints are all over this. As readers may recall from our previous episode of the Mexico show, in late August, the US Ambassador to Mexico, Ken Salazar, sent a public warning that the proposed judicial reforms could have serious consequences for US trade relations with our largest trading partner. .
In recent days, the Council of Global Enterprises, which represents 60 international companies operating in Mexico, expressed their “serious” concern about the potential negative impact on investment in Mexico. Lobbying group members include Walmart, AT&T, Cargill, General Motors, Pepsico, VISA, Exxon Mobil, Bayer and FedEx.
This contest is not just about choosing judges. The judicial reform is one of more than a dozen proposed changes the government intends to make in the areas of energy, mining, fracking, GM food, labor laws, housing, indigenous rights, women’s rights, universal health care (think, US readers!) and and water management. And some of those changes may affect the ability of companies, domestic and foreign, to line their pockets.
While Ambassador Salazar reduced his interference after AMLO took the symbolic step of putting his government’s relationship with the US and the Canadian Embassy on ice, the US government continued to interfere. A few days ago, the National Endowment of Democracy, which has spent the last six years funding opposition groups in Mexico, published an article in its Journal of Democracy entitled “The Crisis of Mexican Democracy”. Here’s how it starts:
The outgoing president of the country is determined to mock the judges in Mexico. His attack on the law is worse than people realize.
Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO), with only two weeks left in office, has signed into law constitutional amendments that will remove nearly seven thousand state and federal judges and replace them with highly elected ones. The amendments approved on September 15 – just before his supporter, Claudia Sheinbaum, took office – are the latest attempt in his long-term plan to undermine democracy in Mexico.
What the article does say, as Salazar did not mention in his speech, is that many US judges are elected, although not those on the Supreme Court. As I noted in my previous piece, there are other aspects of US hypocrisy on display – for example, the fact that over the past year and a half the outgoing Biden administration has tried almost every legal trick in the book to get it. Trump behind bars, or at least excluded from voting, to no avail.
The Biden Administration is now trying to fast-track its reforms to the US Supreme Court, including imposing term limits on SC judges and amending the constitution to “clarify that there no immunity from criminal charges against the former president while he was still in power.” Although the amendment is very unlikely to pass As the Supreme Court blog notes, the fact that constitutional amendments in the US require a vote of two-thirds of both houses, followed by the approval of three-fourths of the states gives “passage of such an amendment.” it is highly unlikely, if not all but impossible, at this time. “
As if the NED article was not enough, the IACHR-based-Washington-Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) agreed to hold a hearing on November 12 to listen to the complaints of Mexico’s National Association of Circuit Magistrates and District Judges (JUFED). ) about judicial reforms. At the hearing, the team representing JUFED will be able to present their arguments on why the legal reform represents a violation of the Mexican State’s Inter-American Convention on Human Rights.
Opponents of the bill hope that the IACHR will issue precautionary measures that pressure the new government of Claudia Sheinbaum to open a dialogue with the staff of the Federal Justice Branch about the change. The IACHR is an organization of the Organization of American States (OAS), which itself has long served as an instrument of US hegemony in the American continent and the promoter of coups like the one that happened against the former Bolivian President Evo. Morals in 2019.
What happens next will depend on Claudia Sheinbaum and the advice she will no doubt get from AMLO. The nuclear – and probably the best – option would be to close the Supreme Court and replace most or all of its members. After all, it is unlikely that Sheinbaum will be able to advance the government’s reform agenda if the Mexican Supreme Court is willing to break almost every rule on its book to prevent him from doing so – especially if he enjoys the support of the OAS.
Such a move will no doubt attract even more cries of protest that Mexico’s new government is killing democracy. But AMLO himself has already described the US role in this “domestic Mexican” issue as “unacceptable interference.” And, in his defense, Sheinbaum can simply point to the time in 1995 when the newly elected President Ernesto Zedillo, one of Mexico’s most neoliberal presidents, not only closed the Supreme Court but also reduced the number of its judges from 26 to 11 – with little cry of protest. from Washington.
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