Judicial reform has become the key issue of the Government that is ending and of the one that is beginning. And the intersection between the two that occurs these days, in which there is a president elected after winning the elections, Claudia Sheinbaum, and a president who ends her term on October 1. Although both are from the same party and show almost complete harmony, the reform of the judicial branch reveals some discrepancies, even if they are only procedural. Contrasts the urgency to approve it that urges President Andrés Manuel López Obrador and the calmer forums for dialogue that Sheinbaum’s team proposes, in addition to a possible survey of the population to decide on this thorny project, to which the nervousness in the markets and the fall of the peso since June 2, when it was known that the elections had granted Morena an exceptional majority in Congress that allows constitutional changes to be addressed immediately, that is, before September ends and the president leaves to La Chingada, the funny name of his ranch in Palenque.
Since the elections, there has been constant talk of judicial reform, about which the president was asked on Monday after the elections. While congratulating the elected candidate, López Obrador insisted on the project to which he has dedicated the most efforts during his mandate, but which he could not carry out because he lost the qualified majority in the Chambers in 2021. Since then, and even before , the president has been proposing an election of the judges of the Supreme Court and of all the others at the federal level through the vote of the citizens, the only way, he says, to remove corruption from the courts, which he accused this Tuesday, again, of being kidnapped by “organized crime” and “white collar” interests. “They are not at the service of the people,” he has assured time and again.
The counterweight that a Judicial Branch independent of the Executive can provide is what maintains a certain tranquility in the economic markets, now concerned because certain reforms that are not to their liking are approved with the immense strength that the Government party has gained in the Legislative and without possible restraint in the Court. That is the reason why Claudia Sheinbaum has done her best, since she raised her victorious arm on June 2, to calm tempers in the face of the fall of the currency and other financial signals. She immediately entered into talks with the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, the OECD and the large international investment manager BlackRock. This Tuesday she had a first contact with Joe Biden’s Government to talk about Security, after which she insisted that investors can rest assured, “Mexico is a rule of law.”
Before the electoral campaign, when Sheinbaum was putting together his team, it emerged that he had some disagreements about the model for choosing judges. Instead of the popular vote for everyone, he limited it to the Supreme Court, the Federal Judiciary Council and the Electoral Tribunal. The rest of the magistrates of the federal jurisdiction would continue their planned career. And he suggested that the President of the Republic propose 10 names, the Senate another 10 and the Chamber of Deputies another 10, with specific profiles and requirements. From there, the candidates would campaign to be elected by the people, a hybrid indirect election method. Currently, the method is as follows: the president presents a shortlist that the Senate must vote on. If he rejects it twice, the president himself decides, something that has already happened with the last member, Lenia Batres, who thus acceded to the Supreme Court to occupy the position left vacant by Minister Arturo Zaldívar, who became a member. on Sheinbaum’s team as an advisor, precisely, on judicial matters.
Zaldívar reiterated this Tuesday the intention to take this matter through dialogue, with consultations between judges, lawyers and experts from the academic world. “If there are compelling reasons, adjustments will be made, of course they can be made, if not, there would be no point in opening a consultation,” he said in statements to journalist Ciro Gómez Leyva. These forums could take a while, and even more so if a survey is carried out among citizens to see “what the people think about the Judiciary,” as Sheinbaum declared hours later. All this seems to indicate that the president’s haste does not have the supposed echo in the headquarters of his successor, who is inclined to calm the markets. He has even let it slip that if it is not in September, the reform will be at the beginning of his mandate, another possible extension of the planned deadlines. For López Obrador, “justice is above the markets” and those who protest are only “promoters of nervousness,” he said last week. Although in the last few hours, more conciliatory, he has assured that “cleaning up the Judiciary gives confidence to investors.” But he “urges,” he reiterated.
The opposition is protesting, of course. The qualified majority obtained in the Chamber of Deputies and just two or perhaps three seats in the Senate, represents for the adversary parties a steamroller that they venture as “a change of regime”, starting with the judicial reform and continuing with the electoral reform. Other measures planned by López Obrador, for which he called on the people to vote en masse for his project, supported by Sheinbaum, is the elimination of various autonomous organizations, for example the regulator of the energy market, the telecommunications regulator, the Transparency Institute or the Electoral. The “danger” of these reforms has constituted a good part of the electoral campaign of the opposition, which warned that Mexico was walking down an undemocratic path if they were approved in the Chambers. But the vote has not supported their criteria. Quite the contrary, he has left the president carte blanche for what Luis Donaldo Colosio, senator-elect from the Citizen Movement, described this Tuesday as a “capricious politicization of the Judiciary that can destabilize the entire justice system.”
The satisfaction of both the candidate and the president with the electoral results continues these days in the middle of the honeymoon. Sheinbaum and López Obrador have already met to begin the transfer of powers and will travel together to visit some of the emblematic projects of this Administration and learn about other Government actions throughout the country. But the issue of judicial reform is still pending and does not stop making noise. It will possibly be the first decision where it will be seen how far the president’s persuasion and the independence of his successor go. “I will try not to bother her,” said López Obrador after learning of his electoral victory. In Mexico, the power of a president begins to fade the day the next one wins the polls. But this time, paradoxically, because they are from the same party, the political equations are much more complex.
Subscribe to the EL PAÍS Mexico newsletter and to the channel electoral WhatsApp and receive all the key information on current events in this country.
#presidents #urgency #Sheinbaums #dialogue #narratives #judicial #reform