Pablo Hiriart
Yesterday, the Judicial Power collapsed in Mexico, the division of powers ended, and the Constitution no longer guarantees individual rights.
Our Magna Carta will be a draft that Morena can cross out without limits, protection, reply, or review that could correct outrages or errors.
To achieve this, the government bent Justice Alberto Pérez Dayán with methods typical of regimes such as Daniel Ortega’s in Nicaragua and Nicolás Maduro’s in Venezuela.
Or the spying on the private lives of citizens during the dictatorship of Erich Honecker in East Germany, which was made into the famous film The Lives of Others.
In yesterday’s historic session, Justice Alfredo Gutiérrez Ortiz Mena argued that the reforms approved by the Morenista majority in Congress are not a constitutional modification “but a constitutional destruction” because they abolish citizens’ rights and the division of powers.
He cited Article 16 of the Charter of the Rights of Man and the Citizen, born of the French Revolution, which states—in more or fewer words—that in a society where rights are not guaranteed, and there is no separation of powers, “there is no Constitution.”
Justice Loretta Ortiz Ahlf’s voice went down the nation’s spine like a shiver when she spoke against the value of the international treaties signed by Mexico on human rights and other matters.
For her, the Constitution is above the international treaties signed by Mexico, even though the first article of the Constitution places them at the same level.
Ortiz Ahlf, as will be recalled, owes her merits to López Obrador since she lied when she reported that Pope Francis had accepted AMLO’s invitation to participate in the dialogues between organized crime and the families of the victims of their murders and forced disappearances.
The members of the Court who opposed the destruction of the judicial power did not act as a block. Despite different arguments and even serious divergences, they reached the same conclusion: the Legislative Power cannot act to the detriment of the Judicial Power’s autonomy.
Before Gutiérrez Ortiz Mena’s intervention, Justice Margarita Ríos Farjat stated that, with the reforms under discussion, the Judicial Branch is being stripped of the autonomy granted to it by the Constituent Assembly. This was done in other countries, “such as Germany, which paid for it with painful historical experiences”.
With this, she alluded, without mentioning it, to the Enabling Law, which granted the totality of power to a single power in Nazi Germany.
Justice Luis María Aguilar Morales’s statement was relevant in the sense that the Constitution safeguards harmonious and peaceful coexistence in a society.
He is right. Without it, we will have the law of the jungle—or the law of Morena: its legislators will be able to change the basic principles of the Magna Carta in matters of freedoms and rights, for example, and there will be no possibility of challenging those decisions.
It will no longer be possible to resort to Amparo or suspension against the decisions of the (spurious) qualified majority of Morena and allies to protect the fundamental guarantees that are violated by fundamental changes to the Magna Carta.
This majority, which has a spurious origin, cannot be refuted in the highest court.
Appealing to international instances within the treaties signed by Mexico will not be viable because Congress’s resolutions will be unassailable.
Luis María Aguilar vehemently reminded the plenary that Congress is a constituted power, not a constituent one.
With a similar argument, Justice Ríos Farjat said that with the reforms underway, the Judicial Power is “an intervened power” since it was redesigned without its participation.
The legacy of the Constituent, she said, is that power is exercised through the representation of the three branches of government, not two or one. And the task of the Court is to preserve the fundamental pillars bequeathed by the Constituent.
That framework, which took the country more than a century to perfect to guarantee individual and collective rights, collapsed yesterday.
The justices Loretta Ortiz Ahlf, whose merit we already know, the justice Yasmín Esquivel Mossa, who plagiarized her professional thesis, the Morena activist Lenia Batres, and the extorted justice Pérez Dayán, gave their vote to destroy the rule of law and give the Constitution to Morena.
In 1903, Enrique Flores Magón hung a banner on the balcony of El Hijo del Ahuizote’s offices with the legend “The Constitution has died” and a black ribbon.
Three days later, it was published in the weekly of the Flores Magón brothers:
“It is painful for us to cause the Mexican people the deserved affront of launching this phrase to publicity: ‘The Constitution has died…’ But why hide the black reality any longer? Why drown in our throat, like cowardly courtiers, the cry of our frank opinion?… when justice has been thrown out of its temple by infamous merchants and over the tomb of the Constitution, an unheard theocracy rises with cynicism. (…) The Constitution has died, and by mourning today the front of our offices with this fateful phrase, we solemnly protest against the murderers of it, who, having as a bloody scene the people they have vexed, celebrate this day with signs of rejoicing and satisfaction”.
We have returned to a similar stage, with the adjustments of time.
The Constitution has died.
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