The end of the Mexican president's pocket veto

A notable legislative reform: The Permanent Commission of the Mexican Senate declared valid a constitutional reform that eliminates the so-called "pocket veto" of the Mexican president.

What this means in short is that while earlier the Mexican president could in certain cases allow bills to linger on indefinitely by not signing them, now the presidents of the Chamber of Deputies and of the Senate will have the authority to do so. Reportedly more than 52 legislative projects await the president's signature.

After now receiving approval from 19 state legislatures, the amendment to the Constitution, originally from 2008, will now become law as soon as it is published in the Diario Oficial.

The "citizen candidacy" debate

Senator José González Morfín, who is the head of PAN's group in the Senate, came out strongly in favor of "citizen candidacies," that is, candidates not emanating from parties, for elected office, and claimed PAN's 40-strong group of senators would back this.

González Morfín touch upon the conventional arguments: Yes, Mexicans have a constitutional right to be candidates, but are blocked from being so unless they go through a party; this is anti-democratic, etc.

The senator said PAN would back non-party, "citizen" candidates on all levels - mayors, deputies, senators, even the president. He criticized a proposal from PRI that went in the other direction, requiring 18 months of party membership before being allowed to run for office.

In a time of (or perennial?) discontent with political parties, such proposals do strike a chord and certainly warrant a hearing. But for all the talk of the glories of a "citizen," non-party candidate for the presidency, no mention is made of the potential negative implications of this.

For one, in Mexico, one can imagine a situation where a "citizen" candidate, riding a wave of anti-party sentiments, can simply, through means legal or not, "buy" him or herself the presidency. What if the narcos decide to postulate a candidate? El Chapo throwing his billions behind a person promising to put an end to the drug war and withdraw the army? It may sound and be far fetched, but let's keep in mind that parties, for all their flaws, do function as some kind of filter here.

But let us also look to Latin America: What have been the consequences of these "citizen" candidates? The cases of Alberto Fujimori and Fernando Collor de Mello, non-party presidents of Peru and Brazil, leap to mind. Even if the candidate would be a competent democrat, they would face likely problems of not having legislative backing from a reliable party. And what if they are outright criminals like Fujimori and Collor de Mello, elected on what they claimed to be a mandate to rule as they pleased? The results were not pretty.

By all means: There are arguments to be made for allowing citizen candidates. But so far there has been virtually no mention of the potential pitfalls of "anti-party" candidates, which need to be brought into the debate.

Senate approves PRD initiative to create Secretary of Migration

The Mexican Senate took an important step yesterday when it in a floor vote approved to pass on to senate committees a PRD initiative to create a national Secretary of Migration, elevating the head of the National Migration Institute (INM) to federal rank. This is a hugely important step, as elevating the institute to a federal position would not only create much more visibility for the migrant issue, but hopefully allow for much more resources and coordination between federal, state, and municipal levels, and would directly bring in governors from migrant heavy state to sit in on its council. The initiative also contemplates much improved public attention to human and labor rights of migrants in Mexico, as well as to Mexicans abroad.

Meanwhile, in Chiapas, the PRD-led state Congress a few days ago went ahead on its own to create a  "Commission to Protect Human Rights of Migrants" (Comisión para la Protección de los Derechos Humanos de Migrantes) and to guarantee passing through Chiapas the right to shelter, as well as rights to using health services and hospitals, and the protection of law. It's a but a step, as it will be a long-term process to put these rights into practice, but it is  nonetheless a very significant one for migrants' rights

"The only difference I see between Diaz Ordaz and Enrique Peña is that Diaz Ordaz was ugly."

Jorge Insunza, a PAN local deputy in the Mexico State congress, made the quote of the day: "The only difference I see between Diaz Ordaz and Enrique Peña is that Diaz Ordaz was ugly."


Insunza Armas compared Mexico State governor Enrique Peña unfavorably to Gustavo Díaz Ordaz, the authoritarian PRI president with an inferiority and insecurity complex (1964-70) from Puebla who ordered the gunning down of hundreds of demonstrators in Tlatelolco in 1968. 


Beyond the exaggerated comparison, it appears that Peña Nieto will stop at nothing from reaching the presidency. In a day of infamy in the Mexico State legislature, what has now been baptized "Peña Nieto's Law,"  explicitly aimed at stopping a PAN-PRD common candidate, passed by a 52-21 margin -  PRI, PVEM, PANAL, PSD, and Convergencia against the votes of PRD, PAN and PT. 

PRD legislators Oscar Sánchez Juárez and Ricardo Moreno Bastida stood guard at a coffin that contained Mexico's electoral law, and the PRD had brought mariachis who entoned Las Golondrina, all symbolizing the death of democracy in Mexico State. Moreno dixit: 

"We are having a wake for the remains of democracy in a small coffin, because this democracy was very young, and still it was murdered by Governor Enrique Peña, for the fear it caused him"

That is also an exaggeration, but the blatant institutional engineering - changing the electoral code opportunistically exclusively to block a common opposition candidate, as well as to reduce the time allowed for campaigns, which blatantly favors Peña Nieto's media-promoted and -created candidacy - is an exercise in blatant institutional engineering, and an ominous omen for his possible presidency. 

Marcelo Ebrard, who has maintained a relatively cordial relationship with his peer in Mexico State, called the initiative a "typical PRI abuse":

"What matters is that they know they might lose the state of Mexico. There has never been an alternation [of power] in the state of Mexico and sure this year we will see, for the first time in history, a change of party"

The law will now need to be ratified by a majority of the municipalities, which will not be a problem due to the PRI's dominance of Mexico State politics. Last year, to recall, PRI and the Green Party (PVEM) in alliance won about 4/5 of the state's municipalities (97 out of 125, to be exact), due to the very mechanism of a common candidate. This is the first electoral "reform" in 15 years that is pushed through in a majoritarian manner, without any input from opposition parties.


PRD and PAN may, however, take the matters to the Mexican Supreme Court. Regardless, all gloves are now off, if they were ever on.

Gordian knot cut, for now, in San Lázaro: Jorge Carlos Ramírez Marín president of the Congress directorate

The crisis engulfing the Mexican congress regarding control over its key organs appears to be resolved, for now, yet the deal appears more than a bit shady: PRI will preside over the Congress directorate, while the PRD will get control over both the directorate and the coordinating junta the last year of the congress period.

To recall: PRI, reneging on previous accords, decided to go for the presidency for the coming year of the mesa ejecutiva or Congress directorate, a key organ, even though this corresponded to the PRD. Given that the presidency of both the directorate and the coordinating junta rotates among the three largest parties in congress, this would, given the cycle, leave the PRD in control of both of these organs the last year of congress, which would be unconstitutional. Then how was this possibly resolved?

The coordinators of the parties in congress agreed to a deal where PRD will get to preside the two organs, though a special vote of 2/3 majority will be held where the stipulations of the Organic Law regulating Congress will simply be "set aside" for that year. PRD will simply have to take their word for it, that this will actually come to pass.

Yet it gets fishier. Knowing that the part of PRD allied with Andrés Manuel López Obrador was strongly opposed to allowing the Nueva Izquirda faction obtain the Congress presidency, the deal that PRD's group coordinator and AMLO  incondicional Alejandro Encinas made appears a bit suspicious, given that Encinas himself loudly condemned as unconstitutional just a few days ago the outcome he now has apparently signed on to.

The new mesa ejecutiva president, Jorge Carlos Ramírez Marín, is considered very close to PRI national leader Beatriz Paredes, who has not given up her own presidential ambitions, or at least to be mayor of Mexico City. Even though she will step down as PRI leader, her influence will thus clearly be felt in San Lázaro the coming session.

PRI anger, part II: PRI will push for impeachment

Francisco Rojas, PRI group leader in the Chamber of Deputies, announced that PRI would push for an initiative that would introduce a reform allowing for the impeachment of the Mexican president:

"The federal government has not tired of showing us that it is capable of anything, rather than to allow our electoral rise, because the spectacle cynically put on by him and his party to harass and try to shown by him and his party, to harass and to try to bring down the PRI, can not and should not be an option that we accept passively."

The PAN, meanwhile, through party leader César Nava declared its full support for the PRD to head the directorate of the Chamber of Deputies the coming legislative period. PRI is reneging on an earlier agreement where the PRD would take over the rotating presidency, yet in an act of vengeance against the PRD is now seeking control of the directorate for itself.

And to this, which on its own can lead to a serious climate of political instability, ungovernability and unconstitutionality, PRI has now added threats of impeachment.

IFE and TEPJ at loggerheads over a crucial issue: What is illegal propaganda vs. what is an "interview"?

The Federal Electoral Institute (IFE) is well aware that something needs to be done to avoid a "perfect storm" ahead of 2012. Specifically, IFE is calling for a new electoral reform to decide, once and for all, what amounts to freely exercising journalism and the free flow of information through interviews with candidates, and what amounts to outright abuse of this mechanism, where "interviews" are merely thinly disguised propaganda for a candidate. The obvious case of Enrique Peña Nieto stands out here: The Mexico State governor continues to flaunt electoral laws such as the prohibition of propaganda by public officials by agreeing to a plethora of "interviews" that only serve to boast of his supposed achievements and drum up support for the  PRI. Yet many of the members of IFE's general council do not agree with TEPJF's recent decision on where to draw the line. 


(This is related to, but not identical, to the recent clampdown on president Felipe Calderón by the TEPJF, where the federal electoral tribunal deemed Calderón to have broken electoral as well as constitutional law by his "announcements" ahead of recent electoral contests).


Put simply, the TEPJF declared that a PAN candidate in Tabasco and his party, as well as the radio station, should be sanctioned for breaking electoral law, as the candidate held a total of nine interviews with the radio station. This was found to be excessive, and as a result both TEPJF and the radio station will be sanctioned in one way or another. 


But clearly we have many competing ideals here, as IFE is well aware of. 
- To what degree do interviews (radio, tv, newspapers, etc) extend to electoral propaganda?
- What is the difference between performing a public service - the free flow of information - and doing propaganda for a candidate?
- Is there a maximum limits for interviews? (nine? eight? five?)
- Should journalists, already under enormous pressures in Mexico, also work under the threat of possibly being sanctioned while merely doing their job of informing?


The burden here clearly falls on the IFE to draw the line, and the electoral institute is not all too happy of this enormous extension of its sphere of operation that the TEPJF's decision in practice entails for the IFE. 


To recall, the 2007-2008 reform set strict limits on political campaigning, such as granting parties a set amount of time/resources for electoral propaganda, yet banning the parties (and, to be sure, other actors such as business, NGSOs, the church, etc) from paying for further political advertising. 

Yet where does one draw the line between what is carrying out the crucial duty of political reporting, versus actively campaigning for a party through phony/paid "interviews"?
There is hardly an easy answer, but it is in my view of utmost importance that this line is clearly drawn ahead of 2012.


And may I also add: Mexico's neighbor to the north could very well use a revamping of its own electoral and media laws: Should Fox "News" really be allowed to operate as such when it  is not only acting as a propaganda arm for the Republican party and the nativist fringe "Tea Party" organizations,  but its owners even donate money to the party it is supposed to cover objectively as a news organization?

IFE confirms: No penalty for the president for breaching law

Despite the resolution by the TEPJF, Mexico's electoral tribunal, that president Calderón broke constitutional and electoral law by his "public announcements" ahead of this summer's state elections, the Federal Electoral Institute confirmed that the president will not face any sanction, for the simple fact that no such penalty is contemplated for what are defined as "electoral crimes" by the executive power. 


Expect a legislative push soon to change this legal absurdity. 


President of the PRD, Jesús Ortega, noted congress should reform the law to end this "guaranteed impunity." (For tis part, IFE itself, said council president Leonardo Valdés, has been pushing for an overhaul of this aspect of the law since 2008).
This sounds very reasonable. While the 2007 electoral law made it illegal to publish government propaganda ahead of electoral contests, leaving out any specific penalties only undermines the respect not for this particular electoral prohibition, but for law in general.

Electoral tribunal: Calderón violated constitutional and electoral law.

The TEPJF,  Mexico's highest electoral court, declared that Calderón broke both constitutional and electoral law by publicizing the "achievements" of his government ahead of the recent state elections, in a period where no government publicity-propaganda is allowed. 

Even though former president Vicente Fox was criticized by the TEPJF, for blatantly interfering in the 2006 election through the same kind of acts president Felipe Calderón has apparently learned little from his predecessor. And, as in the case of Fox, he will not be sanctioned, as electoral law still does not stipulate any clear mechanism to punish public servants who engage in these actions. 

Clearly, much remains to be done with the COFIPE, or the federal law regulating elections, in a future electoral reform. 

An important point that begs repeating: Excessive transitions between state governments

The critique is not new, but El Universal deserves credit for bringing it up at a particularly important juncture in time, namely following the first transitions in 80 years to an opposition party in Oaxaca, Puebla and Sinaloa: The excessive transition period between governments. 


While most other countries allow for a mere few weeks between the election of a new governor and his or her assumption of power, Mexico is an extreme outlier. Some examples :

* Sinaloa: The new governor will have to wait six months to take power
* Puebla: The new governor will have to wait eight months to take power


* Hidalgo:  While the ruling party won (though its victory remain disputed), the new PRI governor will not take office until April 2011 - ten months after the election.


To those who have followed in particular the highly authoritarian and corrupt PRI states that finally switched parties, one does not need much imagination to envision the outgoing party, still in shock from its loss, desperately trying to cover its tracks and/or trying to sabotage the incoming administration. 


In sum: As far as I can see, there are no valid practical arguments for maintaining these excessive transition times, yet plenty of anecdotal evidence that keeping them is a really bad idea. In the paradigmatic case of Oaxaca, for instance, the lame-duck PRI-controlled congress' recent vote to absolve outgoing governor Ulises Ruis for any responsibility for the killings in 2006, as well as attempts to preempt future revisions of the state expenses during Ruis' reign, are very likely only the tip of the iceberg. 


And yet Oaxaca still has months to go. 

Four years later, PT still refuses to meet with Calderón: A note on the "Workers Party"

While both PRD and Convergencia agreed to join today's "Dialogue on Security" arranged by President Felipe Calderón, the Partido del Trabajo (Workers Party, PT) refused to sit down with the president of Mexico and contribute to a national debate of the current crises in Mexico.
The party thus continues its line established after the 2006 debacle to refuse to have anything to do with what it still claims is an illegitimate government. Yet this has nothing to do with principles, but is just  another indication that the PT, desperate to retain its party registry, continues to jump as soon as AMLO says so. The party is completely beholden to him, just as AMLO, seemingly paradoxically, is also very much reliant on the PT's official party registry. It is also irresponsible to reject even sitting in on, let alone participating in, such a national debate. 


The PT poses as a leftwing, more "radical" alternative to the PRD, a party it declared as its "electoral enemy" in the 2009 Federal elections yet has joined in an uneasy coalition called DIA, short for "Dialogue for the Reconstruction of Mexico," but the history of the party exposes it as an electoral outfit that is only challenged by the Green Party (PVEM) for the prize of Mexico's must utterly opportunistic and unprincipled party. Its support for AMLO has very little to do with ideology or programmatic affinity, but everything to do with practical matters. 


One can go all the back to the very beginning, when the PT was set up in the late 1980s-early 1990s by none other than Raul Salinas, the "inconvenient brother" of Carlos Salinas, in an attempt to siphon off votes from the left. While the PT eventually took on a life of its own, I think it is very much worth recalling that before the 2006 elections, it took months of hard negotiation to bring the PT on board behind AMLO's candidacy. The PT almost went with PRI, and only joined AMLO's coalition due to generous concessions from the PRD, as the PT was handed a number of secure seats for deputies and senators far beyond what its vote tally would warrant (this was part of the pre-2007 electoral reform coalition negotiations). It is no small irony that the party that is now in true Stalinist spirit ultraloyal to AMLO in 2006 almost joined the archenemy, the PRI. 


I find the PT's lack of willingness to join this national dialogue, far from reflecting anything resembling a principled ideological stand - the party doesn't have an iota of this - to be more of the same: Pure opportunism, and irresponsible politicking.