The president of the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation (SCJN), Norma Piña, has made public this Sunday her proposal for judicial reform. The document, which comes from the federal and local judiciary, comes in extremis as an alternative to Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s initiative. “The demolition of the judiciary is not the way forward, as intended,” said the minister in a special broadcast, in which she asked the senators to evaluate her project: “Once again I make a respectful but firm call to the legislators, to all the authorities of the security and justice systems, that we can change things. We must listen to each other among the powers of the union.” The president’s reform has already been approved in the Chamber of Deputies and next week it will be discussed in the Senate, where Morena and its allies only need one more vote to make it a reality.
For weeks, the Supreme Court and the federal Judicial Council have been preparing their own judicial reform project. This Sunday, with just a couple of days left for López Obrador’s initiative to pass its last barrier in the Lower House, Norma Piña has announced its launch. The document, called “Comprehensive reform of the justice system in Mexico: challenges and proposals,” is —in the words of the minister— “a proposal that arises from a reflective and self-critical process of federal judges and magistrates, as well as personnel from the jurisdictional bodies and 11 local justice systems, whose objective is to contribute to the discussion on judicial reform, from the direct experience of those who administer justice.”
Accompanied by ministers Jorge Pardo, José Luis González Alcántara Carrancá and Luis María Aguilar, and members of the Federal Judicial Council, Norma Piña has insisted on the failures of the current judicial reform, which has as its main change the election of judges by popular vote: “Our history cannot be defined by the easy narrative that all security and justice problems in the country are the fault of the judges. Those who believe this do not know Mexico.” “From the Federal Judicial Branch we honestly tell you that our resistance is not based on our present, our commitment is to the generations to come and fundamentally to the country that we all long for,” she said.
The proposal comes on the same day that the Senate committees met to issue their opinion on the reform. The president of Mexico’s highest court has defended her project as “part of a broad exercise of listening and dialogue” with all the actors in the federal and local justice system, legislators, civil society organizations, academia, students and victims of violence. “If we have the courage and the real will today we could take firm steps to make the deep and necessary changes to build the peace, justice and reparation that Mexico so badly needs,” said Piña.
The president of the Court participated on Friday in one of the protests organized by the workers of the judicial branch against the reform. Dressed in a white T-shirt with the symbols of the SCJN, the Government of Mexico and with the legend “We are all the PJF (Judicial Power of the Federation)”, the minister took photos with the attendees and was surrounded by slogans of gratitude for her opposition to the initiative. Only one day before, Piña initiated two consultations to find out if she is authorized as president of the Supreme Court to stop the approval of the judicial reform.
The matter stems from a request filed by the National Association of Circuit Magistrates and District Judges of the Federal Judicial Branch (Jufed), which considers that López Obrador’s proposal is unconstitutional and violates the principle of judicial independence. The organization asks the SCJN to stop the legislative process as a precautionary measure, something that is unprecedented in Mexico. Piña referred the two issues to Lenia Batres, the last minister appointed by the president and a public defender of judicial reform. She will be the one to make a proposal on what the court should do so that it can then be discussed by the rest of the plenary session.
López Obrador harshly criticized Piña for having accepted Jufed’s request: “It would be an aberration and a flagrant violation of the Constitution.” The president said that an intervention by the Court in the middle of the legislative process “would be a gross interference” and “arbitrariness”: “It has no legal basis.” Normally, the Court rules on the constitutionality of a norm after it is approved and not during the discussion process. The reform was approved on Tuesday in the Chamber of Deputies by the overwhelming majority of Morena and its allies, and is now in the hands of the Senate.
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