Some officials, including three Supreme Court justices, have called it an attempted “coup.” Unsurprisingly, Washington’s fingerprints are all over this area.
On Tuesday, Claudia Sheinbaum was sworn in as Mexico’s first female president, but she has already been suspended from her job. Mr. Sheinbaum now has to deal with the issue of choosing not to invite Spain’s King Felipe VI to his inauguration five years ago after refusing to apologize for Spain’s colonial excesses in Mexico. diplomatic crisis With Madrid.
But the biggest problem lies closer to home, with the Supreme Court determined to derail, or at least delay for as long as possible, the most important constitutional reform of the current former AMLO administration. In this effort, we can expect support from the US government.
For the first time in its history, the Mexican National Supreme Court (SCJN) issued the following decision: Submit a constitutional amendment bill for consideration. The reforms in question involve fundamentally reforming the judicial system and have already been passed with the required two-thirds majority in both houses of Congress. This is fiercely opposed by Mexican opposition politicians, the judiciary, big business lobbies, and the U.S. and Canadian governments.
One “last bullet”
Yesterday (October 3), the SCJN upheld the government’s appeal against its judicial reform program by an 8-3 majority. The decision means the Supreme Court will hand over consideration of the dispute to one of the justices who voted in favor of the resolution. There is also the possibility that the court could issue an injunction that would effectively halt constitutional amendments. Mexico Economic Daily El Financiero explained This verdict is the “last bullet” (an interesting choice of words) for current and former Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador. “Plan C” reform.
This reform aims to fundamentally restructure the workings of Mexico’s judicial system. Most controversially, judges and magistrates at all levels of the system will no longer be appointed and will instead be elected by local residents in elections scheduled for 2025 and 2027. Incumbent judges, including those on the Supreme Court, must win a popular vote. If you want to continue working. A new agency will be created to regulate procedures and combat the rampant corruption that has plagued Mexico’s judiciary for decades.
The AMLO government argues that this is all necessary because two of the main structural causes of corruption, impunity, and lack of justice in Mexico are: b) The gap between Mexican society and the judicial authorities that oversee legal procedures at all levels, from local courts to the Mexican Supreme Court, continues to widen.
There is some truth to this. And while making judges accountable to elections may ameliorate some of these problems, it also poses a threat to the independence and impartiality of the judiciary, which is already in short supply. As some critics have argued, AMLO’s Morena party already controls both the executive and legislative branches, similar to the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), which has remained in power uninterrupted. There is a risk that it will eventually take control of all three branches of government. He held power in the country for 71 years (1929-2000).
However, as I wrote in the previous article, piece On this issue, the AMLO government has the constitutional right to pursue these reforms, which have the support of approximately two-thirds of Mexicans, and are following established legal procedures.
violent collision
Yesterday’s hearing at the Supreme Court saw an unusually sharp disagreement among the sitting justices. Supreme Court Chief Justice Norma Piña argued that the law is clear that members can analyze actions that may violate judicial independence. The majority argued that the court had not yet made a “substantive” decision on reform, but the three justices who voted against the resolution warned that a “coup” was afoot.
Justice Renia Batres Guadarrama argued that the court was “arrogantly treating powers it does not have,” such as the power to submit for review constitutional amendments approved by the legislature. In doing so, she said, it violated “the supreme principles of the Constitution, the separation of powers and the Constitution’s rule of law.”
“The SCJN is carrying out a true coup d’état by attempting to bring under constitutional control the activities of reform forces that have participated in the process of constitutional amendment regarding judicial matters in strict compliance with the provisions of Article 2. Article 39 of the Constitution stipulates that all public authority emanates from the people and is established for the benefit of the people. ”
Another judge, Yasmin Esquivel Mossa, described the court’s resolution as “a precursor to a constitutional coup.”
“The court wants to ignore the amending power of the Constitution. The court sends the message that it can overturn constitutional amendments in the administrative process established by the Federal Judiciary Organization Act, which is unacceptable. It’s creating a constitutional crisis.”
Senate President Gerardo Fernández Norona, a member of the ruling Morena party, posits that the Supreme Court is “the supreme power, beyond legislative power, executive power, and above all sovereignty, proving its sectarian nature.” I did,” he said. Mexican people. ”
us fingerprint
The judicial reform program proposed by the AMLO government was already supposed to be finished and dusted off after it passed both houses of Congress in mid-September. But a small number of powerful domestic interests, including business lobbies, traditional media, and opposition parties, are determined to thwart it, and they are determined to find the perfect time to do so: Sheinbaum’s mandate. I chose the first few days of
Unsurprisingly, Washington’s fingerprints are all over this area. As readers may recollection Since our previous article on this Mexico showdown, in late August, U.S. Ambassador to Mexico Ken Salazar announced that proposed judicial reforms could seriously impact U.S. trade relations with its largest trading partner. They sent out a very public communiqué warning that there was.
A few days earlier, the Global Enterprise Council, which represents 60 multinational companies operating in Mexico, expressed They have “serious” concerns about the reform’s potential to curb the impact on investment in Mexico. Members of this lobbying group include Walmart, AT&T, Cargill, General Motors, PepsiCo, VISA, ExxonMobil, Bayer, and FedEx.
This showdown is about more than just choosing the judges. This judicial reform is part of more than a dozen reforms the government plans to enact in the areas of energy, mining, fracking, genetically modified foods, labor law, housing, indigenous rights, women’s rights, and universal health insurance. Readers who are one of them (imagine, USA)! ) and water management. And some of these reforms are likely to affect the ability of domestic and foreign companies to line their pockets.
After AMLO took the largely symbolic step of freezing the government’s relationship with the U.S. and Canadian embassies, Ambassador Salazar softened his intervention, but the U.S. government continues to meddle. Just a few days ago, the National Endowment for Democracy, which has been funding Mexican rebels for the past six years, released a report stating: article The Journal of Democracy has the subtle title “Mexican Democracy Disaster.” Here’s how it starts:
The country’s outgoing president is determined to destroy Mexico’s judicial system. His attack on the rule of law is even worse than people think.
With two weeks left in his term, Mexican President Andres Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) has signed a number of constitutional amendments that will remove approximately 7,000 state and federal judges and replace them with publicly elected judges. . The amendment was approved on September 15, just before his protégé Claudia Sheinbaum. take the helm This is the latest effort in his long-standing plan to undermine Mexico’s democracy.
What the article doesn’t mention, just as Salazar didn’t mention in his communiqué, is that many American judges, if not Supreme Court justices, are elected. As I pointed out in my previous article, there are other elements at play in America’s hypocrisy. For example, the outgoing Biden administration has spent the past year and a half trying just about every legal trick in the book. Mr. Trump was jailed and at least disqualified from voting, but to no avail.
The Biden administration is now rushing through its own reforms to the U.S. Supreme Court. These include imposing term limits on South Carolina judges and amending the Constitution to clarify: no Former presidents are granted immunity for crimes committed while in office. ” This reform is highly unlikely to pass, but as the Supreme Court blog memothe fact that amendments to the U.S. Constitution require two-thirds support from both chambers of Congress, followed by ratification by three-quarters of the states, makes it unlikely that such an amendment would pass at this time. “This is extremely unlikely or completely impossible.”
As if the NED article wasn’t enough, the Washington-based Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) agreed A public hearing will be held on November 12 to hear the appeal of the Mexican National Association of Circuit Judges and District Judges (JUFED) regarding judicial reform. At the hearing, a delegation representing JUFED will be able to present their case as to why the judicial reform constitutes a violation of the Inter-American Convention on Human Rights by the Mexican state.
Opponents of the bill hope that the IACHR will take precautions to encourage the new administration of President Claudia Sheinbaum to open a dialogue with workers in the federal judiciary regarding this reform. The IACHR is an arm of the Organization of American States (OAS), which itself has long served as an instrument of American hegemony in the Americas, as well as being a major party to coups like the one against Bolivia’s then-President Evo. It has also functioned as a facilitator. Morales in 2019.
What happens next depends on Claudia Sheinbaum and the advice she will undoubtedly get from AMLO. The nuclear and perhaps best option would be to shut down the Supreme Court and remove most or all of its members. After all, if Mexico’s Supreme Court is willing to break almost all of its own statutory rules to block her actions, Sheinbaum will have no choice but to uphold the government’s reform agenda, especially if she has the support of the OAS. There is little chance of progress.
Such actions are sure to invite even louder cries of protest that Mexico’s new government is trying to eradicate democracy. However, AMLO himself has already described the US role in this “strictly internal matter of the Mexican state” as “unacceptable interference.” In his defense, Sheinbaum also noted that recently elected President Ernesto Zedillo, one of Mexico’s most neoliberal presidents, not only shut down the Supreme Court, but also reduced the number of justices from 26 to 11. One could simply point to the 1995 reduction in people. Not even a cry of protest could be heard from Washington.
