With a reservation that was never in the more than 500 pages of the opinion adopted in committees, but which was added last minute and read in grandstand in less than a minute and a half, a majority of Senators headed by Morena, the PRI and the Green Party endorsed extending for two more years the presidency of Minister Arturo Zaldívar in the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation (SCJN).
The inclusion of such a reservation was so surprising that opposition lawmakers could not even ask for the floor before it was voted on. Claims for what happened were filed once the result was announced with phrases such as a “Coup d’eer to the judiciary”.
How did the events happen?
The antecedent
The prechamber of what happened yesterday was the discussion in the justice and legislative studies committees of the opinion through which various judicial systems were amended and the new Organic Law of the Judiciary was created. These amendments were necessary to land what was reflected in the constitutional reform of the judiciary published on 11 March.
As a result of these discussions, and the exchange with judges and magistrates, on 12 April the senators of those committees approved the opinion. Senator Miguel Angel Mancera, a member of that committee, provided Political Animal the final version of the 508-page document.
This note published yesterday detailed the major changes envisaged by the new law, such as the tightening of anti-corruption actions and a new career service.
However, as to the length of office of the Minister President of the Court, the opinion did not contemplate any change from what was already in force law. The text of Article 12 remained virtually identical to the current one, noting that the presidency would be renewed every four years and that there was no possibility of re-election.
The opinion included at the end 12 transitional articles in total, none of which referred to the duration of the current President of the Court in the post, or that of other directors. The tying transient, last on the list, only noted that the new Organic Law of the Judiciary of the Federation abrogated the one passed in 1995.
The Madruguete
As planned, the Senate plenary yesterday addressed the final discussion and vote on the opinion adopted in committees. This after he was given a first reading since Tuesday.
The session in plenary chaired by the chairman of the board, Senator Eduardo Ramírez Aguilar, took place in his first four hours as planned. Senators from the PAN and Citizen Movement expressed doubts and rejection of the initiative with arguments such as not being debated enough in open parliament, or that in some cases it fell short.
At 3:51 p.m., after 4 hours with 12 minutes of the session, Senator Ramírez Aguilar decreed together with the assembly that the opinion was already sufficiently discussed in general and in particular and the vote was held. The new Organic Law was passed with 106 votes in favour, eight against and no abstention.
Immediately afterwards Senator Ramirez announced the debate on the 12 transitional articles for which there were no registered speakers as they were, for the most part, formalities. However, before going to the vote, PES Senator Eunice Romo Molina, in her role as technical secretary of the board of directors, announced the “addition of a new transitional article”, presented by Green Party Senator Raúl Bolaños.
In exactly 86 seconds, Senator Romo read out the reservation which, in short, noted that in order to implement the constitutional reform adopted on March 11, the person currently in the presidency of the Court will remain in office until November 30, 2014. The period of the counselors of the Judiciary is also extended.
This situation, in fact, means that the Zaldívar period ending in 2022 would be extended by two more years, until 2024.
After concluding the reading, the same senator asked in a free-hand vote whether this reservation, the text of which was not in the opinion already referred to, was admitted for discussion. A majority of senators from Morena, PRI and Green, connected remotely, approved it.
Five seconds later and without giving time for anything else, Senator Ramirez repeated that there were no speakers registered to discuss the articles reserved so he called for progress to the vote on the entire package. This without taking into account that when no one signed up it was because the transient items were 12, and the new one extending the Zaldívar period was not included.
The package 13 transitional articles was approved with 80 votes in favour, 25 against and 4 abstentions.
Opposition claims
Not a minute had elapsed after the final result was announced when the claims began. Senator Xóchitl Gálvez stood in front of the grandstand with a folder and the legend “don’t be gandallas”. Then the Senator of Citizen Movement, Juan Zepeda, asked for the floor to speak in the rostrum and warned what had happened.
“It is outrageous how the constitutional order is being aganged today. It’s a clear contubernium with Senator Bolaños Cacho and the majority who came to surprise this Senate (…) are violating the Constitution, it’s aberrant, you’re the same as the PRI,” he claimed.
Zepeda further acknowledged that the new transitional article had not been read in the rostrum, to which Senator Romo Molina replied that she had done so, and that it was the fault of the citizen movement’s own legislator for not paying attention.
The claims gradually escalating. Senator Dante Delgado said it was “outrageous” that it had been accepted to include this last-minute transient without debate or concertation. He responsible the President of the Republic, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, for being behind this maneuver.
In response, Morena Senator Ricardo Monreal warned that the reform had been approved with 80 votes in favour and no violation of the procedure had been committed. It recalled that the mavericks had the resources to appeal this decision and that the revision of the Chamber of Deputies was still lacking.
PAN Senator Damián Zepeda took the floor to accuse that it was a “coup d’etion to the judiciary” and said that while there was recourse to an action of unconstitutionality, the decision would fall to Zaldívar himself, which represented a conflict of interest.
The PRI Senator. Claudia Ruíz Massieu also accused violations of the procedure. It recalled that the added article was not in the opinion, and that it was also not added to the system.
“It is true that the secretariat read an addition proposal, but when we wanted to search the system for the text of it we did not find it. In addition, the board was closed without allowing a second round of votes to be vented and that caused a well-understood understanding of what was being voted on,” she said.
It’s unconstitutional: experts
Constitutional law experts and various jurists criticized what happened in the Senate and considered that what happened yesterday flagrantly violates the Constitution itself.
On his Twitter account, former Court Minister José Ramón Cossío recalled that article 97 of the Constitution says that the president of the Court can only stay in that position for four years.
The Doctor of Law and researcher of the Institute of Legal Research of the National Autonomous University of Mexico, Diego Valadés, noted that no Organic Law is above the constitution, and that the period of the President of the Court is “unforeseen”.
CIDE’s constitutional law expert Javier Martín Reyes agreed to point out in an interview with Political Animal approved in the Senate violently by the Constitution. “Here we have a transient article that is openly unconstitutional. It is also because of the extension given to the counselors of the judiciary whose term is only 5 years, and not as 7 years that you want to extend. It’s very unfortunate what happened,” he said.
The researcher of the Institute of Legal Sciences of UNAM, Juan Jesús Garza Onofre, considered that what happened in the Senate actually puts against the sword and wall to the Judiciary of the Federation itself, which in a statement issued last night was disreperated from the addition of the aforementioned transient.
“This is the political cost of not following the right channels for constitutional change. It must be Minister Zaldívar himself must be angry at this and point out that what happened was unconstitutional,” Concluded Garza Onofre.
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