Mexico City.- For months, tensions have been mounting in Mexico over the president’s sweeping plans to overhaul the judiciary, shaking up the country’s political system and straining diplomatic relations with the United States.
This week, those tensions erupted into the open. Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said Tuesday that his government was “pausing” relations with the U.S. embassy in response to criticism from the U.S. ambassador over the president’s push in the final weeks of his six-year term to make changes to the judiciary, which could force thousands of judges out of office. “Hopefully there will be a declaration on their part that they are going to be respectful of Mexico’s independence,” López Obrador said in reference to the United States during his daily news conference. “As long as that doesn’t happen and they continue with that policy, then there is a pause with the Embassy.” “‘Pause’ means we are going to take a breather,” he added, noting that it would also extend to the U.S. State Department. However, López Obrador asserted that overall relations would not be affected, seeking to allay concerns about a potential impact on trade. Mexico is the largest trading partner of the United States, and there are growing concerns and warnings about the effect of judicial reforms on business confidence and the economy. López Obrador also announced a pause in relations with the Canadian embassy after his ambassador, Graeme Clark, conveyed Canadian investors’ concerns about judicial reform. It was unclear what such a pause with the State Department and embassies would mean in practical terms. López Obrador did not specify how the pause would be carried out. But on Tuesday afternoon, Mexican Foreign Minister Alicia Bárcena Ibarra said on social media that the relationship “with our friends and neighbors in North America is a priority and fundamental, and on a day-to-day basis it remains fluid and normal.”
The causes of stress
The president’s remarks followed comments last week by Ken Salazar, the U.S. ambassador, who called proposed judicial changes, which include electing judges by popular vote, “a major risk to the functioning of democracy in Mexico.”
Salazar said the measures could threaten Mexico’s trade relationship with the United States by eroding trust in Mexico’s legal framework and encouraging drug cartels to “take advantage of politically motivated and inexperienced judges.” The criticism was a sharp shift from his long-conciliatory approach to his relations with López Obrador. The Biden administration, which needs Mexico’s cooperation to control migration flows, has rarely criticized López Obrador, let alone done so publicly, and López Obrador has called on the United States to leave Mexico’s internal affairs to Mexicans. In a statement issued Tuesday afternoon, the U.S. embassy affirmed its “utmost respect for Mexico’s sovereignty” and its “desire to continue its close collaboration with Mexico,” but said it had “significant concerns that the popular election of judges would not address judicial corruption or strengthen the judiciary.” Claudia Sheinbaum, the president-elect and a López Obrador protégé, has fully embraced the president’s judicial initiative. “There is this idea that with judicial reform, the independence and autonomy of the judiciary is lost,” he told reporters on Monday. “It is the other way around.”
In the hands of new legislators
Mexico’s newly elected Congress could begin voting next week on the changes proposed by López Obrador. If approved, they would change the judicial system from one based on specialized training and qualifications to one in which almost anyone with a law degree and a few years of experience could run in elections to become a judge.
The move could force more than 5,000 judges, from the Supreme Court to local district courts, off the job. Thousands of federal judges and court workers have already joined nationwide strikes. On Sunday, protesters took to the streets in more than 20 Mexican cities hoping to draw attention to what they called an attack on the judiciary. Attempts to weaken the courts have long been seen as a sign that a country’s democracy is in danger. Once judicial independence takes a hit, experts say, countries can quickly slide toward autocracy. In Poland and Hungary, crackdowns on the courts have made it easier for leaders to consolidate power. Most recently, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel faced mass protests when he tried to bar judges from overturning government decisions. (The effort was rejected by Israel’s Supreme Court earlier this year.) López Obrador says the reform is needed to prevent corruption and sentences that allow drug traffickers to go free. Though his term ends in October, the new Congress — where the ruling Morena party and its allies have secured large majorities in both chambers — has a one-month window while López Obrador is still in office to approve dozens of proposed constitutional changes, including the president’s plan to elect judges and magistrates by popular vote. Changing the way judges and magistrates are selected, López Obrador says, would root out corruption in the judiciary and ensure that everyone, not just the wealthy, has access to justice. And — as he has said himself — it would allow his government’s plans, such as transferring the National Guard from civilian to military control, to go unchallenged by Mexico’s Supreme Court. “The judiciary is a lost cause, it’s rotten,” he said in May of last year, when he first laid out his ideas for reform. “It’s completely at the service of the conservative bloc,” he said, referring to his opponents. But others, citing the president’s barrage of attacks on judges who have ruled against some of his plans, say the measures amount to a thinly veiled pretext to erode judicial independence and increase the power of López Obrador’s nationalist political movement. “They intend to make us disappear as an institution,” said José Fernando Miguez, a spokesman for the striking workers and a court employee in Mexico City. “They intend to make people disappear who have spent their entire lives working as judges and magistrates with extensive experience.”
#Diplomatic #crisis #judicial #reform