Mexico City.- Workers in the judiciary denounced the way in which the reform of the sector was approved yesterday by Morena and its allies, and called for “legal resistance” in national and international courts.
“We will not stop until justice, as we know it, is once again a firm and secure pillar. At this crucial moment, we call for legal resistance,” said the national director of the Association of Circuit Magistrates and District Judges of the Judicial Branch of the Federation (JUFED), Judge Juana Fuentes.
“We will not abandon our principles; justice cannot be bought, manipulated or co-opted. We will fight not only for ourselves, but for the generations to come.” “We will not remain silent. We will resort to all national and international bodies that protect judicial independence. The UN Human Rights Committee, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights and global networks of judges and magistrates are just now learning what is happening,” he said.
At a rally outside the Senate, where they have been holding a sit-in since last week, the workers accused the reform of seeking to take away the independence of the judiciary by placing the positions of judges, magistrates and ministers up to popular vote.
They reported that they have not yet decided whether to continue the strike in the Judiciary, nor whether they will lift the sit-in at the headquarters of the Upper House, as that will be resolved during the course of the day. Fuentes read a statement against what they called a “defeat for the people of Mexico,” in which she referred to the accusations that the Government threatened and tried to buy Opposition senators to have the vote it needed to have a qualified majority. Finally, PAN senator Miguel Ángel Yunes Márquez and his father Miguel Ángel Yunes Linares, his substitute, accused of corruption by President Andrés Manuel López Obrador and members of Morena, gave the official bloc the vote they were missing. “Resorting to the most despicable and unacceptable practices in a democracy, corrupting and subjugating, they have decided to approve a reform that directly attacks the independence of the Judiciary, the pillar that has guaranteed impartial justice and respect for human rights since this country was founded under a democratic framework,” said the judge. “The submission of judges and magistrates to popular election poses a danger that we cannot ignore. Judges are not and will not be politicians, we should not be. We were not appointed to respond to the interests of a party or a parliamentary faction, but to apply the law in an objective and above all fair manner.” “Think, Mexicans, what a disaster it will be for the justice system, for your daughters, for your sons, if criminal groups, through the economic power they wield, finance judicial campaigns. What will happen with the trials against these operators? What will happen with the cases of corruption? Justice becomes one more spoils, an instrument of the powerful to perpetuate their impunity,” he added. Several speakers from all over the country, workers, students and civil organizations, spoke on the platform that served all week to coordinate the sit-in, surrounded by dozens of citizens. They accused the government of pressure, the destruction of the judicial career, the slander that workers earn millions of pesos and that judges release criminals. In addition, they highlighted sentences in favor of workers, of patients who require medicines and the protection granted against abuses by the authorities.
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