Apr. 26 2021
The cascade of aberrations (in Mexico's government) makes it difficult to record the turning point that places (our) democracy in danger of death. If every day we hear an attack on criticism, pluralism, the autonomous agencies*, we can get distracted and think that the new coup is just one more affront.
MV Note: Because of its long history of authoritarian governments, controlled by presidents, in recent years, Mexican citizens have advocated for and achieved the creation of a number of "autonomous agencies" which, though appointed by the Senate, are then supposed to be free of any intervention by the president or the Congress. They include the National Electoral Institute, the Institute for Freedom of Access to Information and the National Institute of Statistics and Geography, among others.
President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (aka AMLO) has criticised and dismissed the importance of these agencies when they have taken actions of which he does not approve. He likewise criticises and dismisses as wrong any member of the press, political party or individual that disagrees with him
We would make a huge mistake if we did not sound the loudest alarms for the democratic attack carried out by the Morena majority (in Congress) last week.
MV Note: Morena, the Movement for National Regeneration, was established by AMLO as a non-profit organization in 2011 to develop grassroots support for his 2012 presidential candidacy. It achieved formal registration as a political party in 2014.
AMLO was its successful candidate in 2018 for a six-year presidential term. That year, Morena also won majorities in both chambers of Congress as well as in the majority of state governorships and legislatures. Mid-term elections for the lower chamber of the Congress, the Chamber of Deputies,will be held early in June of this year. A number of gubernatorial elections will also be held.
The majority in Congress decided to violate the Constitution knowing full well what they were doing.
MV Note: Both chambers of Congress voted to extend the term of the president of the Supreme Court from four to six years, such that it matches the term of the president. The presidency rotates among current ministers (justices) of the court. Congress also extended the terms of the members of the Federal Electoral Tribunal, which hears and judges on complaints of violations of election laws, which have a long history in Mexico. The terms of office for both are set by the Constitution.
Congress has the power to amend the Constitution by a relatively easy process. They need a two-thirds vote in both chambers. The amendment then needs to be approved by a simple majority in the legislatures of a majority of the thirty-two states, including Mexico City, i.e. seventeen of them. The Congress chose not to bother with this constitutional pathway, which Morena has the votes at both federal and state levels to insure.
The Constitution hinders AMLO and he has resolved to put it aside. Diego Valadés**, undoubtedly one of our most recognized constitutionalists, said that
"to vote knowingly in favor of an unconstitutional measure is to move to another realm: unconstitutionality. It is the conscious and express decision to oppose the Constitution."
His statement is fair because the legislators knew perfectly well that extending the term of the current president of the Supreme Court of Justice violates a very clear law. They did it anyway.
The logic of dictatorship is now official doctrine. I am trying to be careful with these words. I am not saying that a dictatorship has been established in Mexico. What I'm saying is that its reasoning, its practice, and its values have been legitimized, based on power (that Morena and AMLO hold). The attack on the Constitution in order to favor an ally of the President who sits on the highest court of the nation has exposed the arguments of the dictatorship with terrifying clarity:
The logic of dictatorship is now official doctrine. I am trying to be careful with these words. I am not saying that a dictatorship has been established in Mexico. What I'm saying is that its reasoning, its practice, and its values have been legitimized, based on power (that Morena and AMLO hold). The attack on the Constitution in order to favor an ally of the President who sits on the highest court of the nation has exposed the arguments of the dictatorship with terrifying clarity:
- the Constitution must be violated because there are causes superior to it.
- It is necessary to transgress the norms of the Constitution because the generality of its norms does not make sense in extraordinary times.
- The Constitution must be violated for the benefit of those magnificent characters who deserve the public trust.
- A historically sublime cause cannot be reduced to the trifles of the rules.
(MV Note: AMLO calls his administration The Fourth Transformation of Mexico, one of four critical turning points in Mexican History. According to him, the prior three are the War for Independence [1810-21], the Reform Period of the presidency of Benito Juárez [1857-72, with the interruptions of two civil wars] and the Mexican Revolution [1910-1917])
- In extraordinary times, decisions must be above the norm. And, finally,
- Heroes, being superhuman, have to listen to the call of history and do not have to read the articles in a book that limits them.
I have never heard the defense of this dictatorial logic so clearly before in a discussion in the Mexican Congress as was given by Deputy Ignacio Mier (leader of Morena in the Chamber of Deputies) in his speech. I never imagined that it would be a spokesperson for the majority who would develop and defend it so openly and so proudly. His speech is a piece to be remembered. It is a speech defending illegality given in the very chamber where laws are produced.
In response to the substantive speech of Porfirio Muñoz Ledo*** (opposing the new law), Ignacio Mier found no other argument than to eliminate legality as reactionary. He thus defended the violation of the Constitution as a show of patriotic love. I underline this point:
- The majority coordinator did not even attempt to pretend respect for the Constitution.
- He did not invoke some precedent.
- He did not suggest an imaginative reading of the text to match the decision with the law.
- He argued that, yes, they were violating the Constitution and that that was precisely what should be done.
At the center of the outrage was the extension, without a doubt, of the term of the very person who should defend constitutional values. Minister Arturo Zaldívar's response represents the most perverse ambiguity at a critical time. He spoke without clarifying; he simulated without assuming any commitment. The minister is willing to destroy the reform (of the judicial system) on which he insisted in order to continue to succeed in speculative gambling. If the marbles of the judicial policy game end up consolidating the outrage, he will be the one to decide, until the end of his term, what to do (MV Note: the president of the Court sets its agenda). The whim of the judge will be above the law. The unconstitutional logic is finding unsuspected supporters.
*Jésus Silva-Herzog Márquez studied Law at UNAM and Political Science at Columbia University. He is a professor at the School of Government at Monterrey Institute of Technology. He has published The Old Regime and the Transition in Mexico, and The Idiocy of the Perfect. Two collections of his columns from the cultural section of the Reformation have been published as Walking and Seeing. http://www.reforma.com/blogs/silvaherzog/
**Diego Valadés is a research professor at the Institute for Legal Research and professor in the Faculty of Law at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, UNAM. He is a member of the National College, the Mexican Academy of Language and the College of Sinaloa. He is the author of several books on Constitutional Law, which include: Constitutional Dictatorship in Latin America, the Control of Power, Cabinet Government, and the Parliamentarization of Presidential Systems. @dvalades
***Porfirio Muñoz Ledo is a long-time Mexican politician. Originally, he was a member of the sole party, the PRI (Party of the Institutional Revolution), and a member of its administration, serving as Secretary of Education and Ambassador to the UN. In 1989 he left the party, along with other "liberal leftists", including AMLO, to form the opposition Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD). In 2006 and 2012 he supported AMLO's campaigns for the presidency. In 2018, he joined Morena and was elected to the Chamber of Deputies for a three-year term, ending in June. He will be eighty-eight in July.
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