Claudia Sheinbaum and her party Morena, and perhaps all of Mexico, just dodged a very big bullet.
Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum’s recent power grab has been largely smooth, despite her party’s landslide victory and her party’s supermajorities in both houses of Congress, allowing her to amend the constitution. As for us reported Just over a month ago, on her third day in office, Mexico’s Supreme Court issued a ruling aimed at derailing, or at least delaying for as long as possible, the current AMLO government’s judicial reform package, plunging the country into a constitutional crisis. Ta. It had already passed both houses of Congress.
For the first time in its history, the Mexican Supreme Court of the State (SCJN) issued the following decision: Submit a constitutional amendment bill for consideration. The reforms in question include fundamental reforms to 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.
(October 3) SCJN upheld an appeal against the government’s 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. mexican economic daily El Financiero explained The verdict was the “last bullet” (an interesting choice of words) for former Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador. “Plan C” reform.
That last bullet was already spent and just missed the mark. On Tuesday (November 5), the Supreme Court struck down key parts of the judicial reform, including the drastic curtailment of the election of judges and magistrates by popular vote, one of its most controversial aspects. The judgment was made as to whether or not.
If the Supreme Court rules in favor of the resolution, and the Sheinbaum government sticks to its course, “legal scholars say there is little or no precedent in recent Mexican history.” There would be “direct conflict between two pillars of government that do not exist.” I wrote of new york times Last week (h/t Robin Kash)
sheinbaum said She was reluctant to negotiate on “something that the people decided on and is already part of the Constitution,” but expected the eight justices who had voted to allow the appeal to vote in favor. It had been. The resolution needed 8 out of 11 votes to pass. A full-blown constitutional crisis seemed inevitable, but one of the eight justices ruled that the nation’s highest court “has no right to decide what should and should not be in the Constitution.” ” until they broke in line and voted against the resolution, claiming they didn’t have the authority to do so.
“Wow, wow, that’s amazing!”
8-3 suddenly became 7-4, one vote short. But then the unthinkable happened. The court’s president, Norma Piña, proposed reducing the minimum number of votes from eight to six. Some of Piña’s fellow judges were shocked by this desperate attempt by Mexico’s most senior judge to change the rules of the match midway through. The judge sitting next to Piña, who voted against the resolution, summed up the moment in three words (in English): “Wow, wow, wow!”
“This was a blatant confirmation of the court’s political agenda and went far beyond what would be expected in a judicial debate.” said Dennis Marker, a veteran political commentator. “(The entire process) was disqualified…This was a political ploy that ended up exposing the court president and the terrible job she did presiding over the court.”
A few days before the hearing, it was revealed In December, Piña met with Alejandro Moreno Cárdenas, leader of the Institutional Revolutionary Party, at the home of fellow Supreme Court Justice Juan Luis González Alcantara Carranca, but not at the Mexican Cultural Institute as Piña had claimed. Ta. Among the issues discussed was the development of a joint plan between Mr. Piña and the main opposition parties to prevent Mr. Sheinbaum and Mr. Morena from winning the June 2 election.
This plan clearly didn’t work. While Sheinbaum would receive the largest majority in modern Mexican history, Morena secured qualified majorities in both chambers, giving them the power to pass fundamental reforms to Mexico’s constitution.
In the end, most of the justices, including Mr. Karanka, who introduced the resolution, rejected Mr. Piña’s absurd proposal to reduce the minimum majority needed to pass the resolution from eight to six, and Mr. Piña was reluctantly allowed to file a lawsuit. There was little choice but to reject it. In a statement, the court announced that “the plenary session of the Supreme Constitutional Court rejected the concept of nullity, as it did not have the eight votes necessary … to invalidate the various provisions contemplated in the draft resolution.” .
“Plan D”
Even if the court votes in favor, Sheinbaum clearly has a Plan B, or as she calls it, a Plan D. In December, after the planned resignation of Minister Luis Maria Aguilar. This would result in four judges favoring the ruling party, and the Supreme Court would no longer be able to approve unconstitutional lawsuits until elections are held in 2025.
But by December, Mexico’s three legislative branches will be embroiled in an unprecedented constitutional showdown. The crisis would undoubtedly have spread beyond Mexico’s borders.
As reported in a previous post, the Washington-based Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) agreed A meeting will be held on November 12 to hear the complaints 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.
If the Supreme Court had voted in favor of Karanka’s proposal to amend judicial reform, and the Mexican government had chosen to ignore or reject the ruling, it would have signaled a “break” with the country’s inter-American system and with international treaties. ” would have meant. about justice and human rights, memo Roberto Gargarerai, an Argentine professor of constitutional theory.
Several international organizations are already closely monitoring events in Mexico, including the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, the UN Rapporteur on the Independence of Judges and Lawyers, and the UN Human Rights Council. The Venice Commission is an advisory body to the Council of Europe on constitutional matters, of which Mexico is a member.
avoid very large bullets
In other words, President Sheinbaum, her party Morena, and perhaps the Mexican people as a whole, have just dodged a very big bullet. The last legal hurdle to judicial reform has finally been removed thanks to the vote of one judge. Protests and strikes by judges and court staff have also lost momentum. Even the U.S. government has remained silent in the wake of recent attempts to block judicial reform, with AMLO taking the largely symbolic step of freezing the government’s relations with the U.S. and Canadian embassies. It seems to be maintained.
With reform finally overcoming the myriad legal obstacles in its way, the Sheinbaum administration can begin to focus on the remaining fundamental reform agenda. The agenda includes dozens of laws the government plans to enact in the areas of energy, mining, fracking, genetically modified foods, labor laws, housing, indigenous rights, women’s rights, universal healthcare, and water management. It includes several reform proposals.
mining reform include Proposals to ban open-pit mining and enshrine in the constitution the AMLO government’s 2023 decree banning the use of genetically modified corn for human purposes are proposed in the agricultural reform package, but this issue is already being discussed by Mexican investors. The United States and Canada are the subject of national disputes and are North American trading partners. The government is also seeking to give powers to constitutionally ban hydraulic fracturing.
The Mexican Senate passed it earlier this week. Reforms that will allow the National Workers’ Housing Fund Association (Infonavit) to build and rent housing for workers for the first time since the 1990s. According to El Imparcial de Oaxaca. The reform proposes amendments to Article 123 of the Constitution aimed at establishing InfoNavit as a social housing system. This would, or at least is intended, to allow workers to obtain sufficient credit to acquire, build, and improve housing.
Some of these reforms, if implemented effectively, will impact the ability of domestic and foreign companies to line their pockets. They could rely on the support of a flexible judiciary that had for decades faithfully served and protected the interests of the rich and powerful. they are include Grupo Salinas, the conglomerate of Mexico’s third-richest man Ricardo Salinas Priego, has been insulated from the Supreme Court. have to pay Not only do we owe hundreds of millions of dollars in unpaid taxes; US investment fund. The fund is currently seeking to recover its investment through the following methods: file a lawsuit sued the Mexican government in the World Trade Arbitration Tribunal.
Mr. Sheinbaum maintains that the judicial reform is merely a pro-democracy measure to allay investor concerns and will have little or no impact on Mexico’s business environment, but AMLO, who designed the plan, says: said At his final press conference, he said some of the sweeping changes were aimed squarely at foreign companies.
“Corrupt judges, magistrates, ministers, it is impossible for them to defend it…Are they going to continue to defend the foreign companies that come to plunder, steal and influence the economy of the Mexican people? …Are they going to continue to represent these companies?”
Only time will tell. Now that the path is clear, the first elections for judges and magistrates will take place. scheduled It will be held on June 1, 2025, and a total of 850 judges will be selected by public vote. Meanwhile, the Sheinbaum administration has shifted its focus from a narrowly averted constitutional crisis at home to perhaps an even bigger issue at the northern border: the election of Donald J. Trump and what it means for Mexico. It will probably be moved. And that will be the topic of a future article.
* As we have written previously, this reform will include that judges and magistrates at all levels of the system will no longer be appointed, but will instead be elected by local residents in elections scheduled to be held in 2025 and 2027. It includes a provision that If Supreme Court justices want to keep their jobs, they need to win a popular vote. 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 argued that this was 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.
