Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s judicial reform will see the light of day in September, even if it is the last thing the president does before leaving. This is what the legislative groups of the National Regeneration Movement (Morena), as well as the teams of the current Government and the next one, assure. With a qualified majority in Congress and almost two thirds of the Senate, the cherry-colored party has cornered the Judiciary with an initiative that will completely change the judicial system. The dissatisfied have little room for maneuver where they will seek to negotiate what they can. The main actors have begun to immerse themselves in these conversations these weeks, among them, the president of the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation, Norma Piña, and the Mexican president. For the first time in a year and a half — a time in which there were plenty of attacks and disqualifications — the Executive and the head of the Federal Judicial Council have lowered the tone in order to dialogue and agree on the fine print of the legislative project.
The relationship between the president and Piña has been tense from the beginning, in January 2023, when the minister was elected to preside over the Judiciary. The attacks, however, have calmed down in recent days. This Monday, Piña admitted that a reform of the judicial system was necessary, although he called for dialogue to achieve something that does not end up being detrimental to Mexicans. The president welcomed Piña’s words and, although he did not stop criticizing the judges for having protected “organized crime and white-collar criminals,” he opened a channel of communication with the Court through the Ministry of the Interior, something that the minister president had been asking for some time. “The Secretary of the Interior could meet with the ministers and the members of Congress would be willing to do the same,” he said and refused to be the one to maintain the dialogue. “I have nothing to do with this.”
The opening, although scarce, was welcomed by the president of the Court, who has not had any communication with the president for about 17 months, as she recently said in an interview with EL PAÍS. “I firmly believe that at least we are all on the same path, in having an honest, open dialogue, because deep down we all have the same concern and the same goal: to improve the justice system in our country,” Piña said on Tuesday in an interview with Carmen Aristegui after learning López Obrador’s response. “The president, as he said, has already presented the reform initiative, so now it is in the field of the legislators, so those with whom we have to dialogue are all the parliamentary groups to reach a reform that really, really solves the problems.”
The core of the reform, and at the same time the core of the controversy surrounding it, is the election of the judges and ministers of the Court through popular vote. An idea that is non-negotiable, as detailed by several sources, including the next legal advisor to the Presidency, Ernestina Godoy. On this, the majority of the ministers of the SCJN have proposed that it be carried out in a staggered manner, so as not to leave some 1,600 judges out of the judicial system overnight, which would end up leaving hundreds of thousands of judicial cases in limbo. The gradual change was one of the points on which the Government can give in, as López Obrador himself has accepted.
The requirements that candidates must meet, including experience in the position, is another point that the legislative chambers will have to debate. On this point, the initiative proposes five years of experience, although the president has considered this week the possibility of removing it. “I have been against that and, nevertheless, it was passed over. Because I am more in favor of a woman, a man who graduates as a lawyer with a lot of enthusiasm to enforce the law,” he said.
The fact that judges are elected at the polls worries the ministers of the Court, as they expressed before Congress, because of the risk it implies for judicial independence. “If the judicial reform is approved in its terms, the most qualified person will no longer get the position. The person who spent years studying, preparing to take the exams, will not get the position, but the most popular one, the one who knew how to relate well with the power groups,” Piña claimed this week at the close of the meetings organized by the judiciary itself to sound out a proposal for a comprehensive reform of the justice system. There he hinted that he would look for alternatives to what the López Obrador government presented, without giving further details about what would change in the Judicial Branch.
The logistics of how the reform will be carried out is the big unknown that will leave room for negotiation. In Mexico City alone, more than 300 justice administrators would have to be elected, and several candidates could be nominated for the post. This would mean that people would have to choose from among hundreds of names who will be the judges. Asked about this, the president responded vaguely that the elections could be divided by district. “These are procedural matters, here the important thing is to renew,” he complained, “a renewal, a reform is always important; more so when you are in a situation of decline.” An answer that does not resolve all the unknowns that judicial reform brings.
Sign up for the free EL PAÍS Mexico newsletter and to WhatsApp channel and receive all the latest news on current events in this country.
#Government #Supreme #Court #tone #negotiate #small #print #judicial #reform