Federico Reyes Heroles
For Héctor de Mauleón, in defense of his healthy obsession: pursuing the truth.
Doubt looms. A straightforward answer is sought: to vote or not to vote, and why. Colleagues whom I respect, such as J. Castañeda, L. de la Barreda, J. M. de la Garza, J. J. Garza Onofre, and others, have given dozens of specific answers.
From different positions, they agree: voting is becoming a farce.
Electing the judiciary is, in itself, a democratic aberration: popularity vs. professionalism. Furthermore, in the proposed scheme, two levels of citizenship are created. Incredible! In Iztapalapa, they will elect judges specialized in a matter that involves all Mexicans. They are first class. Those of us left out, around 99%, are second-class citizens. With Goebbels-style propaganda, people have been led to believe that the problems with justice are solely the judiciary’s responsibility. False. It is perverse to rely on ignorance: 55% of Mexicans believe that this branch of government is responsible for prosecuting criminals. 65% believe that prosecutors and public ministries are part of the judiciary. Judges do not prosecute criminals. That is the responsibility of the executive branch, the police, and the prosecutors. Without vigorous law enforcement, trained investigators, independent prosecutors, resources, and with flawed case files, judges have no leeway, nor should they. Some judges release alleged criminals and do the right thing. An unsubstantiated conviction is the worst injustice. Better potential criminals free than innocent people without freedom. Where did the police—municipal, state, and federal—go in the reform? García Harfuch has made it clear: there is corruption at all levels, but there are also honest Mexicans at all levels doing their duty. The responsibility is shared.
De la Garza points out everything that will not be resolved and exposes the farce. Devastating. Add to that the procedural blunders, the blatant cheating in the drawing up of the lists, the obvious incompetence of the National Electoral Institute, and the return to darkness by eliminating citizens from the count. Dessert: candidates for judges violating the law! We should not be voting on this. It would be better to review the offensive budget allocations for local security and law enforcement agencies, which are responsible for 95% of citizen litigation. In 2024, Pemex lost 620 billion 605 million pesos. In the same year, total national spending on security was 512 billion pesos.
On Sunday, we reached the end of the play. It is called “Tyranny.” In less than seven years, the 4T has destroyed all the mechanisms that serve as a counterweight to the executive branch. The budget of the National Electoral Institute was strangled; the presidential megaphone bombarded it with disparaging remarks. The Electoral Tribunal was captured. In 2024, Morena violated the law by imposing qualified majorities in both chambers, thereby breaching the principle of proportionality. A vote for the ruling party weighed 1.4. A vote for the opposition carried a weight of 0.5. With those majorities, they went after their last prey.
As soon as the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation issued decisions contrary to AMLO’s foolishness, the artillery was directed at discrediting and extorting the justices. At the same time, the budding dictatorship captured the Judicial Council. The Blitzkrieg took another front of the resistance. The icing on the cake: the disappearance of autonomous bodies, centralizing power to the maximum. They succeeded. Goodbye to the National Institute for Access to Information, for costing a billion pesos, but the surcharge for the Dos Bocas refinery is around 240 billion. “Republican austerity,” coincidentally, also dismantled the trained bureaucratic bodies. The loyalists went first; it was explicit. The expansion of preventive detention made many tremble. The judiciary falls on Sunday.
The beginning of plurality, of real democracy, was achieved with the Electoral Reform of 1977. López Portillo made a fool of himself. A vacuum entered the scene. There were results.
Let them take everything… in complete solitude.
They are traitors to democracy.
Farewell to it, sadly, it was brief.
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