The Chamber of Deputies is discussing this week in Mexico a change in the Amnesty Law that empowers the president to commute sentences and criminal proceedings, in cases “relevant to the State”, without discriminating against crimes, regardless of their severity. Approved last week in the Senate, Morena and his allies hope to ratify the change in the Lower House these days, a direct request from the Executive, led by Andrés Manuel López Obrador. In force since 2020, the current text of the rule indicates that an inter-institutional commission must individually study each case that may be able to benefit from the law.
The proposal, presented by Ricardo Monreal in the Senate, actually expands a power that the president already enjoyed, popularly known as a pardon, a common attribution of heads of state around the world. Santiago Aguirre, director of the Miguel Agustín Pro Human Rights Center, points out that the big difference is that the modification of the law covers the entire criminal process and not just sentenced cases. “With the change, a prosecuted person could benefit from the amnesty,” he explains. “The president could dismiss the processes before they are finished,” he adds.
Aguirre and other experts consulted these days show doubts about the rule, which modifies the exception marked in the current version of the text for serious crimes such as kidnapping or where firearms are involved. In practice, the president would have discretionary power to decide who he pardons, without clear criteria on the quantity and quality of information that the beneficiary must provide, or limits on the crimes charged. Thus, a person accused of forced disappearance, organized crime, torture or intentional homicide could see the proceedings against him reduced to nothing. “It should be the power of the judiciary to determine whether it is appropriate or not,” says lawyer Vanesa Romero. “I like it, perhaps, because I think the president is honest, but what happens when another one arrives?” She adds.
The former Secretary of the Interior and retired minister of the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation, Olga Sánchez Cordero, defends the modification. Senator for Morena, Sánchez Cordero points out that the reform “is aimed at providing a response to the right to the truth.” The jurist highlights the locks of the new article: “Only the president can grant the amnesty, when the requirement that the information provided by the beneficiary be verifiable is met. And only in cases of national significance.” And she adds: “I think it is a very important step to clarify crimes, even committed by the Mexican Government itself, or by organized crime. It is not an issue for any perpetrator, no, no, it is for transcendent cases, like Ayotzinapa, Atenco, Rosendo Radilla, and so on.”
Adriana Muro, director of the Elementa organization, points out her surprise and concern with the proposal. Muro and her team participate this week in the discussions that the committees of the Chamber of Deputies will hold, before submitting the change to the plenary session. “From what I have searched, there is no experience of pardons in open processes and for any crime. For example, in the United States, the president usually gives pardons for administrative issues, not crimes. There may be some, but international standards say it has to be for non-serious crimes. So, my feeling is that this is made for someone or for some specific cases,” she points out.
In presenting the amendment a few days ago, the current Secretary of the Interior, Luisa María Alcalde, defended that the change in the law would help advance emblematic processes of recent years, specifically, she said, the Ayotzinapa case. “Here we have reported that there is a pact of silence that we want to break. What we want is to find young people and, in this sense, we are making a major effort so that those who know or who know where they might be can provide information. And the idea is to have a legal framework that allows us to move forward in breaking that pact of silence,” he argued.
The speed with which Morena has processed the amendment in Congress reveals a certain nervousness with the Ayotzinapa case. The attack against a group of normal students ten years ago in Iguala, Guerrero, and the disappearance of 43 has become a headache for the Government. When he came to power in 2018, López Obrador promised a new investigation of the case and its future resolution. As the investigations progressed, however, the case became tangled, given the implications of the State itself, uncomfortable for the Government itself, in the case of the Army's espionage apparatus.
The doubts of Aguirre and Muro point here to the plans managed by the president and his team for the new article of the law, within the framework of the Ayotzinapa case. “You could think that it is designed to forgive the soldiers involved in the case,” says Aguirre, an aspect in which he agrees with the director of Elementa. “They could also have thought of it for prisoners that the investigators have gone to visit, who are in process and who may have information on the whereabouts of the 43. But of course, how is the information they give going to be verifiable? How do you know that they are not going to do it in the dark?” adds Aguirre.
The amnesty law was born with a different logic. “The assumptions he made when it was approved, in 2020, were not bad. It was designed for women prosecuted for issues of pregnancy termination, cases of sedition and cases of crimes against health in less harmful modalities,” says Aguirre, in reference to drug dealing processes. “An amnesty commission was established, with the Ministry of the Interior, the Ministry of Security and Citizen Protection, the National Institute of Indigenous Peoples and others,” she adds. “It was going slowly, but the Government, at the end of last year, said that 400 people had left in the entire six-year term,” she says.
The proposed change now seems strange to the original text of the law. “They are giving the president the power to say what is true and what is not,” says Muro. “In other countries, an institutional architecture has been created for that. And here, furthermore, no accountability mechanism has been thought of. That is to say, who is going to know what truth is provided by this or that defendant who benefits from the law? Just the president? How will society know? “They are concentrating a lot of powers in one person,” he adds. Senator Sánchez Cordero defends that the victims are the wall against illegitimate use of the new article. She argues that in the event that a president unfairly benefits a defendant, the victims could seek protection to stop the measure.
Attorney Muro points out that in other countries, such as Colombia, for example, these types of benefits appear within the framework of transitional justice processes. “The usual way to do it is, one, identify the period of time to be treated, two, create an independent and impartial institutionality, an extraordinary mechanism, and three, identify which crimes can be amnestied according to international standards, in a logical manner. that includes reduction of sentences for non-amnestiable crimes. Then, start a dialogue with victims, with public servants, etc. But here, no one has even asked the victims,” she says. For Sánchez Cordero, this article “is a response to the Government, not only to obtain the real truth, but also a kind of transitional justice.”
If everything goes well for Morena, on Wednesday it could present the amending text to the plenary session of the Chamber of Deputies. The guinda party and its allies have a majority in the lower house. Its approval would be a breeze. This very week, López Obrador could have a faculty that is practically unique in the world. Whatever his plans for the Ayotzinapa case, the president could have a new tool to advance the investigations before the end of the month.
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