Supporters of López Obrador demonstrate in front of the Supreme Court in Mexico City on May 20. Galo Cañas Rodríguez (Cuartoscuro)
Disagreements between the judiciary and the executive branch in Mexico have been one of the constants since the beginning of the six-year term. This week, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador again indicted Supreme Court ministers using the austerity argument, one of his main political slogans. Without addressing who is right on the issues under discussion, the analysts accuse the executive of violating the forms. Disagreeing with the decisions of the Supreme Court is no reason for insults or gross disqualifications, such as the district president pours out on the ministers in the morning, they say. The rest falls into the logic of the best democracies, a struggle for sanity between the two powers. But alongside the escalation of polarization and institutional attrition, there is another impact of the train wreck.
The figures speak for an excessive judicialization of politics during this six-year term: 809 constitutional controversies were debated (414 were reached with Vicente Fox) and 572 unconstitutional lawsuits were brought. “The many decrees that regulate it are the reason for these numbers, and the bills have also gone through the Supreme Court,” explains Laura Valencia, a political scientist at the Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana (UAM) in Xochimilco, who provides the data . .
Losing an absolute majority, the government took shortcuts in Congress to impose its policies, but much of it later clashed with the wall of courts that the opposition resorted to, knowing full well that they were working on the fringes of legislation the law, if not in substance, then in form. “This judicialization of politics runs throughout the Mexican transition,” says Valencia, who believes the lack of a political majority leads to a constant battle with the judiciary that affects the balance of power.
López Obrador encounters the ice wall created by the judiciary’s recourse to salary strategy. This week he has criticized ministers for earning more than the president, which is unconstitutional: 137,000 pesos compared to 284,500, according to published official data. Law professor Julio Ríos admits that not only does this difference exist, but that the salary of Mexican ministers is, with every conceivable nuance, above the average of their peers in other countries, as shown by a comparative study by Ana Laura Magaloni and Carlos Elizondo, citation. “Not that it’s bad, but it’s a bit high,” he says. “Although not all charge the same fees, it depends on what right they entered the ministry with,” warns this researcher from the Autonomous Technological Institute of Mexico (ITAM).
Ríos is aware that there is still a lot to improve in the judiciary, but that “must not lead to offense”. “Furthermore, it seems to me that the government really has no legitimate interest in clarifying what could go wrong in the Supreme Court, but rather that its aim is the co-opting, subordination and erosion of institutions of control,” you think. “The application [del presidente] “A direct vote to appoint the ministers is just another battering ram, it doesn’t even take them seriously,” criticizes Ríos. For the researcher, one of the strongest signs of executive interference in the judiciary was the resignation of Minister Medina Mora in October 2019, with 11 of 15 years remaining in the Supreme Court. According to Ríos, it was a “forced exit victimized by the Financial Intelligence Unit.” A day after his resignation, his accounts were blocked again.
Ríos participated in the group of lawyers and experts, which for years has pointed out nepotism in the judiciary and pending tasks in the judiciary and the union. “But since 2018 there has been an appropriation of criticism from the government that is somewhat correct, but arguing that better use of resources is needed, insults must not be eased,” he claims.
The inauguration of Minister Norma Piña as President of the Supreme Court in January this year had a double and opposite effect. In the executive branch, the thunder chamber was opened because the president was unable to bring his trusted minister, Yasmín Esquivel, into this position, whose ambitions had sunk following a fabulous plagiarism scandal involving her bachelor’s thesis. And war broke out like never before since the morning conferences at the National Palace. But among lawyers there was relief at Piña’s first statements, in which he defended the autonomy and independence of the ministers’ criteria, far from any pressure.
The tension hasn’t let up. “The President makes laws that are unconstitutional and throws the ball in the Supreme Court. If they allow it, they commit institutional suicide, and if they choose to stop it, they face insults and threats,” Ríos summarizes the current situation. With an aggravating circumstance, he adds: “The work of the judge is not questioned, but the individual is attacked by first and last name.” He believes that a president “who has a single platform and a legal and legitimate authority,” cannot single out specific individuals, “as he did recently with the judge jailed in Veracruz.” He challenges the ground rules in a highly aggressive manner that goes beyond normal friction,” he says.
How all of this affects the country’s institutional or democratic health is something that political scientist Alfonso Pérez places in the realm of form rather than substance. He believes that Mexico is already accustomed to an increasingly consolidated separation of powers, which has begun since 1997 and has been evident in notorious cases such as the case of France’s Florence Cassez and the Vallarta case, where legal power gained prominence. “When López Obrador won, it was expected that things would continue in this direction, but no, the processes are starting to reverse,” laments UAM researcher and political scientist Xochimilco. According to him, the tensions that exist today between the two institutions have to do with the autonomy achieved by the judiciary, which has caused the President some setbacks in the measures he wanted to take. He believes that “good judgment” now prevails among members of the Supreme Court.
However, judges are also politicized and ideological people and their judgments divide society. That same week, the US Supreme Court’s ruling against positive discrimination against Hispanic and black students at universities like Harvard and others, which facilitated their integration into higher education, hit like a bombshell. The phrase has, of course, sparked criticism and debate. Judges may not always be right in their decisions, they cannot even be said to be free from an ideological bias, from a subjective intention.
Then what’s wrong with the Mexican President’s attacks? “It is worth deviating from the decisions of the Supreme Court, but another thing is the attacks that come from the executive or the legislature.” And although this is happening in all countries, in Mexico, since the appointment of Norma Piña, the attacks are increasing to a narrative where constitutional controversy or unconstitutionality suits are not enough, where the parties can present their evidence and arguments. Now there is a certain pressure coming from the morning conferences that is not right in any way,” warns Francisco Burgoa, professor of constitutional law at UNAM. “This has to stop in the interests of institutional democracy,” he says.
For Burgoa, a sign of the lack of health in this area is the recent statement by López Obrador, in which he said he had met with five of the 11 ministers to vote for him on handing over the National Guard to the army, one of the most controversial measures of the six-year term. “He believes that these are his subordinates and that he lacks the autonomy and independence of the court,” he says.
Julio Ríos uses the football simile to define the natural tensions between the forces of spurious interference. “Everyone on the pitch knows there will be scrums, shouts and passion, but nobody questions that you can’t score with your hand or that there should be 11 players on the pitch, neither more nor less.”
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