Antonio Navalón
From North to South and East to West, it is convenient to define the moment in which the so-called democratic universe decided to sacrifice the spirit and the letter of its laws in exchange for the popularity and enlightenment of its leaders. The crisis in the relationship between laws, justice, and governments is general. Some countries – for example, China – do not suffer from this evil. However, this is really because Chinese politics, like the politics of the former Soviet Union and still present in today’s Russia, consists of formulating thought-out laws without much room for discussion. One may criticize this communist and even authoritarian form in both countries, but the reality is that in these nations – for better or worse – the law is the law. Although it may be hard to believe for countries that live in different realities, nations, and systems still exist where their leaders are not above institutions or laws.
Under the motto “We the people”, the Constitution of the United States of America makes it clear that, before the law, all its citizens are equal. The problem is that presidents are no longer considered ordinary citizens. It used to be that the word “president” commanded unimpeachable respect and was an office that was obtained – in addition to popular election, in the case of democratic countries – after inspiring and reassuring the people that they were the most qualified citizens to lead the country.
There was a time when the elaboration and implementation of programs and laws were based on the citizens’ needs and will. I am not saying that the past was better since corruption, opportunism, and personal preference over collective preference have always existed. What is true is that laws and democratic institutions have never been as fragile and vulnerable as they are today.
Regardless of the countries where laws have always been rhetorical resources, in the rest of the political universe, all countries are in a crisis and are confronted with their justice system. This is particularly serious because if we have learned anything and history has taught us a lesson, the big difference between a revolution and an effective democratic transition lies in the respect for the legal framework.
In Israel, there are still many people who believe that if the conflict between Benjamin Netanyahu and the Supreme Court of the State of Israel had not been present, the Hamas attack of October 7 would hardly have materialized. In the United States, the Supreme Court constantly has to meet to decide cases that were never in the minds, hopes, or wishes of the Founding Fathers, who inspired and, in some cases, even wrote the U.S. Constitution in their own handwriting. This document was published in 1787 and remained the nation’s cornerstone despite its amendments and rectifications.
Nowhere was it foreseen that a president could carry out, from his office, a coup d’état to distort an electoral result. However, that is what happened. Nor was it foreseen that any president would want to return to the Oval Office with 92 charges – some criminal and many civil – behind him. Some of these charges have to do with the insurrection in the U.S. Capitol perpetrated last January 6, 2021, which is categorized as a crime of sedition or treason.
In Spain, the recent threat of resignation of Pedro Sanchez after having taken five days of “reflection” following the opening of proceedings against his wife for a possible crime of influence peddling has already had a first consequence on what he has called the democratic regeneration plan. This consists of accepting and making all Spaniards know that politicians and especially governments – and if they are left-wing and separatist even more so – are subject to Lawfare (The use of legal systems and institutions to damage or delegitimize an opponent or to deter an individual’s usage of their legal rights). And that the only and most important thing to do is to get their hands on justice so that, in the first place, this will never again be an apparatus of political action and, secondly, that it can be guaranteed that what they call “the mud machine” can be prosecuted even before the mud is placed in the outlets of the fan of the democratic garbage.
In Mexico, President López Obrador will leave for history two fundamental things. The first is elevating the social benefits he has provided during his six-year term to constitutional law. The second is eliminating, earmarking, and leaving no possibility for the healthy, wise—and now apparently clean and handsome—people to trust in justice.
The confrontation between the political power and the judiciary is global, defining and exemplifying the path that awaits us, leaving two possible scenarios. Justice has always been administered by judges, and the judges – who, to my knowledge and without proof to the contrary – are people who make mistakes, who have beliefs, and who, no matter how hard they fight – like Hippocrates’ oath for doctors that their primary responsibility is to save lives – are bound to have certain temptations and problems that cause the humanization of their political decisions. Not to mention those who, simply and bluntly, have sold out or made it so that at the tip of their pen, when they are writing a sentence, what exists is the possibility of climbing three rungs of the ladder in their political career.
Justice has always been human. Therefore, it has always been unjust. But the problem is that this offensive against the legal systems, this attack against the role of the law and against the elements that regulate us, leaves us in the defenselessness of having to fight the affronts without any rules. Up to now, there are rules that prevent an electoral result from being stolen by simple self-will. If the laws that regulate this disappear, everything will be much easier in the short term, although it will inevitably become a real challenge in the long term. And it will be because that would mean that anarchy would be at the door of any democratic system.
I am constantly – and more so in recent years – reminded of the role of the Senate in Ancient Rome when the Caesars began to hover over such a noble edifice. I am convinced that, without the assassination of Julius Caesar, Augustus could never have been the first Caesar. However, in the fight between the enemies of Caesar and the defenders of the Senate, there was a reality very similar to what we see today in the world political landscape. It is the one that stands on the fact that the will of one man can never and should never be above the wills, expressed and embodied in laws, of a people. However, this 21st century, which – whether due to the communications revolution or to the unlimited irruption of social networks in our lives – has become so complicated, in the course of its first 25 years, is shaping and having a propitiatory victim, which is the difficulty of keeping in force and compelling the laws that regulate our coexistence.
In order not to continue speaking in a general way, we must be aware that there are two alternatives. Either we hand over, as Germany did at the time with the Führer, the possibility and power of the creation, modification, and elimination of laws to a single person, that is to say, that from now on, the laws are only sustained by the thoughts and wills of the ruler in office; or, once and for all we establish and reinstate the limits – in the form of laws and legal mechanisms – so that we do not fall into a complete autocracy. The choice is yours.
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