La Jornada: Editorial
Translated by Rachel Alexander
The Chamber of Deputies' Committee on Government yesterday approved a draft of the law regulating the implementation of Article 29 of the Constitution, referring to the president's power to restrict or suspend, with legislative approval, rights and guarantees in cases of invasion, serious breaches of public safety or any other situation which puts society in grave danger. They did this with the approval of every party represented, except the Citizen's Movement, which abstained, and Morena, which voted against it.
The text of the Constitution says that such a suspension of rights will be for a limited time, and that it can not affect the exercise of rights against discrimination; the legal rights of a person; rights to life, humane treatment, family protection, a name, nationality; the rights of children; political rights; freedom of thought, conscience and religious belief; the principle of legality and retroactivity; the prohibition on the death penalty; the prohibition against slavery and servitude; the prohibition on kidnapping and torture; nor the legal rights needed to protect those rights.
The draft approved yesterday, nevertheless, stipulates that the suspension of rights can include the temporary sacrifice of rights to expression, association, movement, freedom of expression, assets, credit and copyright. Thus, it contradicts the Constitutional text it supposedly regulates in more than one sense.
If that inconsistency weren't enough, the bill hides behind the untenable argument that the state of exception "can be a form of protection for human rights", as if they could experience a greater threat than being suspended, even if temporarily.
Another important objection to this proposal is that it does not regulate the ambiguous portions of the Constitution text, which is to say, criteria to define the circumstances under which a suspension of rights is acceptable. In other words, how a serious conflict or risk to public safety is to be understood, and how serious it must be. It's likewise unsettling that it anticipates the suspension of rights for economic crises which might be able to generate public unrest due to their severity. It would suffice, according to the bill, to have a significant financial loss to declare a state of emergency, even if such a circumstance does not cause social unrest.
It's also worth remembering that in past years, there have been many cases which would have justified states of exception in various regions and states. For example, when there has been evidence of territorial control by organized crime in Tamaulipas, Coahuila and Nuevo Leon, as well as points of Chihuahua, Baja California, Sinaloa, Nayarit, Jalisco, Michoacan, Guerrero, Morelos, Durango, Veracruz and the state of Mexico. Nevertheless, because of reasons that are difficult to understand, earlier and current federal administrations decided not to use this constitutional remedy - perfectly applicable in its current form without needing a secondary law - opting instead for measures less consistent with the legal order, such as the use of armed forces to fight crime.
With this precedent, it's pertinent to ask why the country wants a law like this, which doesn't clarify and define the constitutional provision, but instead introduces margins for an exercise of power against human rights and with an authoritarian mark. Spanish original