“A constitution must contain the basic principles of the organization of public power and the catalog of fundamental rights.”
Miguel Carbonell
One of the main problems with our long, patched and contradictory constitution is that each president tries to adapt it to his ideology. For this reason, this February 5, President López Obrador declared: “We must continue fighting for the ideals of the Mexican Revolution enshrined in the 1917 Constitution; not stop insisting on abolishing, through legal and democratic means, the reforms contrary to the interest imposed during the neoliberal period; continue proposing changes to the legal framework for the benefit of the people, until returning to our maximum law all the greatness of its original humanism”.
A constitution, however, should be neither “neoliberal” nor conservative, but politically neutral. It must define general rules for the organization of the State and guarantee fundamental rights. Political provisions, left, center or right, must be established in secondary laws so that they can change over time.
The United States Constitution, promulgated in 1789, was just four pages and 4,543 words. In 233 years it has had 27 amendments, mainly to expand fundamental rights. With the amendments, the extension reaches only 7,591 words. Only one amendment has been repealed, the 18th, which prohibited alcoholic beverages, which was removed by the 21st. The last amendment, the 27th, was ratified in 1992, but had been proposed since 1789. Stability has helped create legal certainty and facilitate the development of the American Union.
Mexico, on the other hand, has had three constitutions, in 1824, 1857 and 1917. The latter has 136 articles, not counting transitory ones. It usually comes in books of hundreds of pages. Originally it had 21,382 words, but by November 2018 its length had quintupled to 111,783, with transitory ones, according to the Belisario Domínguez Institute of the Senate. Article 41 alone, on elections, has 4,363 words, almost the same as the entire original Constitution of the United States. Its amendments have repealed previous provisions and have often been contradictory. The only certainty has been uncertainty.
Between 1917 and 2018, the Mexican constitution underwent 707 reforms in 233 decrees. The president who respected her the most was Adolfo Ruiz Cortines, who only made two amendments, one to legalize the vote for women. Enrique Peña Nieto made 155. López Obrador had 56 by November 18, 2022, according to the Chamber of Deputies.
The president says that his reforms are “humanist” and that those of his predecessors were “neoliberal”, but the amendments simply reflect the vision of the current president. AMLO defended his reforms on February 5, such as having included subsidies for the elderly; but we do not know if at some point these subsidies, which cannot be reduced in real terms, could cause a bankruptcy of the State and therefore a crisis that affects everyone, mainly the poor. That is why political programs should not rise to constitutional status.
A small constitution, which establishes fundamental rules and guarantees human rights, is the best legal framework for a country. What we see in Mexico is a carousel in which each president wants to leave his mark on a nation that resists straitjackets.
tired
Jesús Ramírez thought it was “unfortunate” that the president of the Court, Norma Piña, did not stand up when the president arrived at the ceremony for the anniversary of the Constitution. AMLO said that “Surely she was tired!”, but added that she was “pleased” because this demonstrated the independence of the Court. The truth is that the minister got up when the honors for the president began.
#politicized #letter