Breathe
By Georgina de la Fuente
Once again, on February 5, the Executive took advantage of the anniversary of the Constitution to announce reforms that are promoted as democratizing but that seek to concentrate power in the same hands as always. In 2024, López Obrador announced, among other reforms, the transformation of the Judicial Power through the election of judges, magistrates and ministers. This, so that "democracy becomes a reality and never again will the government be at the service of the laws of a minority". This year, Claudia Sheinbaum used the occasion to announce reforms to prohibit reelection and nepotism in elected office. "Our fight for democracy and against any form of corruption are a matter of principle," announced the president in an act in which, for the first time, the head of one of the branches of government was excluded.
In the last few weeks, the chaos and improvisation in the organization of the judicial election have become evident. Those who wanted to participate in the process had to pass through the political sieve of the Evaluation Committees, which decided in an arbitrary and opaque manner who had the approval of the Presidency and the Congress to appear on the ballot. Thus, the Senate anointed itself as the organizer of elections without the legal certainty required to do so. For their part, the authorities in charge of carrying out these functions have had to resort to the manipulation of the constitutional principles that should guide the electoral function in order to adjust to the haste imposed by the powers that be. Thus, what has been proposed as a democratizing triumph has actually meant significant regressions in the way elections are carried out, affecting political rights that have been won and those yet to be won, such as access to justice.
In a new episode of democratic simulation, Sheinbaum proposed to eliminate reelection as a mechanism to fight corruption and make democracy effective. The truth is that, since its incorporation to our electoral system in 2014 and the beginning of its operation in 2018, the Congress omitted to provide the figure with enough content to fulfill the objectives it proposed. With its approval, this sought the professionalization of legislative work, the establishment of closer links between citizens and their representatives and a more effective accountability. But the lack of regulation resulted in a lukewarm application that, in fact, has kept the control of candidacies in the hands of the parties.
The law did not establish rules regarding the need to separate from office for campaigning and oversight to ensure that public resources are not used for that purpose. The National Electoral Institute made the figure a right of the politicians and not a right of the citizens, allowing someone to be reelected by a political party other than the one that originally nominated him/her and even for another district other than the one he/she won. It was also allowed that a person elected by the principle of majority could be reelected by the principle of proportional representation, in the absence of an express prohibition in the law. In this way, the citizens were not empowered to reward or punish through their vote, but rather the politicians who were in good standing with the leaderships in order to nominate them again.
Our experience with reelection was condemned by a legislative omission of origin. Therefore, the proposal to eliminate reelection once and for all after only six years in operation does not provide us with more democratic guarantees, but rather assures the parties the prerogative of keeping in their hands the power to nominate candidates and to define the political future of their cadres.
On the other hand, the initiative that prohibits nepotism in elected positions, although positive in principle, did not incorporate other positions in the Federal Public Administration where nepotism is widespread. Worse yet, the reservation approved in the Senate that would make the prohibition effective until 2030 would ensure candidacies to direct relatives of current governors in Guerrero, San Luis Potosí and Zacatecas in the 2027 elections.
