Manuel Suárez Mier
It is an aberration to place national security above the rule of law, respect for which should be a priority for the preservation of the democratic regime.
There is great tension between those who believe that national security should take precedence over any other objective, including the rule of law, and those who think the opposite. Still, the conflict becomes more acute when national security is used as an excuse to violate any legal precept and demolish the legal system designed to enforce them.
In my opinion, it is an aberration to place national security above the rule of law, respect for which should be a priority for the preservation of the democratic regime, because once the application of the law is subordinated to any other objective, anarchy will dominate and the federal executive will override the powers of the rest of the branches of government.
The terrorist attacks in New York 18 years ago generated a particularly heated confrontation in the United States because, in the name of national security, human rights were abused to the hilt, wars were started under fictitious pretexts, and the private lives of many were violated through government spying.
The accession of Donald Trump, of choleric temperament and legendary contempt for the law, only aggravated this situation because the only fig leaf he could put on to violate multilateral agreements and trade treaties, and impose tariffs on imports at will, was by invoking the security of his country.
By comparison, what is happening in Mexico is no less serious, with the law of extinction of ownership, which allows the immediate expropriation of private property, together with equating tax infractions with serious crimes with preventive imprisonment, all this without any judicial ruling: it is confiscatory and fiscal terrorism!
If to this is added the decision of the Executive Branch to adduce reasons of national security to annul judicial demands that stop the construction of the airport at the Santa Lucia airbase, to demolish the 35% progress of work on the new airport in Texcoco, and to build the Mayan train and the Dos Bocas refinery extra-legally and without permits, the danger in the making increases.
In Mexico, which is not characterized by a vigorous rule of law and where impunity and violation of the law are systematic, concentrating greater power without counterweights in an all-powerful Executive, as it used to be in the not too distant past, represents a serious setback and an affront to its precarious democracy.
In the era of coups d’état, the first thing the military did was to suspend individual guarantees and declare a state of emergency, which left the citizenry defenseless before authority, which is something similar to what many governments like those of the US and Mexico do today, empowering themselves to cancel any law claiming to defend national security.
But also, and as I mentioned, giving up the rule of law is an invitation to anarchy because the laws in force grant the State’s coercive powers. Still, when these are suspended, the State’s legitimacy vanishes, and citizens do not have to abide by any law.
*This column was originally published in Spanish by Excélsior on Sept 27, 2019.