One friend of mine told me a story about a discussion between her and another friend of ours; it was about voter qualifications. The other friend suggested that voting be restricted to those who have higher educational attainment, something like a geniocracy. My friend who shared the story with me expressed reservations as it would disgruntle the masses who have lower attainments, so do I (I also wrote a piece on the disconnect between the masses and the elites).
In most cases, suffrage is and shall be universal. What if it comes to the more technical and more sensitive positions?
. . . . .
Andrés Manuel López Obrador, also known in his initials AMLO, is a determined Mexican politician with left-wing orientation. He was the leader of the left-wing splinter group of the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI; Institutional Revolutionary Party), the Partido de la Revolución Democrática (PRD; Party of the Democratic Revolution), from 1996 to 1999, and from 2000 to 2005 served as the head of the government of the country's capital, Mexico City (CDMX). His administration in CDMX was well-received, and he attempted to head the country in 2006, but the support he garnered inside the city was not of the same level nationwide, losing to Felipe Calderón of the Partido Acción Nacional (PAN; National Action Party), demanding recounts, and even had himself declared "legitimate president", but Calderón stayed. AMLO made another attempt in 2012 and lost again, to PRI's Enrique Peña Nieto, doing another round of recount requests.
His firebrand politics provided him with the label of populist by international media, emulating the dislike towards giant enterprises and the Mexican establishment. His left-wing policies include foreign one, one of the first markers being the volunteerism of Bolivarian propagandists in 2006 backed by then-Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez, then in 2012 he planned to stop cooperation with the United States intelligence concerning Mexico's Drug War. AMLO's victory in 2018 would put another country in the trend of global democratic backsliding, and yes he won under his new party, the Movimiento de Regeneración Nacional (Morena).
The name of his party's coalition that election was talking to the populace: Juntos Hacemos Historia, Together We Make History, but what history did his regime make? Where is his "Fourth Transformation" of Mexico? The country's most critical issues-- corruption, the Drug War (Mexico is infested with cartels) and the immigration crisis (the country is between the United States and the rest of Latin America)-- remained badly unsolved. Maybe socialising services? Not the major issue. Maybe the foreign policy shift? He acknowledged Chávez' successor Nicolás Maduro during his own inauguration to the ire of lawmakers; he enabled Bolivian autocrat Evo Morales when the latter was forced to leave the country after cheating in 2019 (read more); and found a friend in Donald Trump and also blamed the USA for the Nord Stream 2 pipeline attack.
AMLO is at odds with the judiciary; his plans could get halted by court decisions. The construction of the flagship Tren Maya (Tsíimin K'áak/ Maya Train), for instance, was met by injunction after injunction after injunction due to factors like deforestation, population displacement and archaeological finds, but the rulings were not binding and thus unable to stop the construction. But fearing his successor, Claudia Sheinbaum, would experience the same kind of hurdles for her plans, he proposed judicial reforms-- appointing all judges even to the Supreme Court by popular vote, reducing Supreme Court judges from 11 to 9, and introducing "faceless judges"; the latter may protect the attending judge from perpetrators linked to organised crime, but may be abused against defendants if given wrongful convictions.
The proposal was met with condemnation from opposition politicians, students, judicial workers, and rights organisations, including Margaret Satterthwaite, United Nations special rapporteur on the independence of judges and lawyers, and the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) of the Organisation of the American States (OAS). Popular vote can remove checks and balances by making the judiciary aligned with the executive and the legislative, and is prone to influence and manipulation by cartels and politicians (the latter would be prohibited to endorse, as stipulated). To delay legislative approval of the proposal, university students stormed Senate on 11 September 2024, yet the bill was passed and is now in effect since 15 September, making Mexico the first country to entirely vote the judiciary, and killing judicial independence.
The fact that Sheinbaum, AMLO's pick, got the majority of votes in this June's election compels me to not give trust to the masses especially for the judiciary vote. I thought AMLO will be an authoritarian but failed to hear any authoritarian act from him until this plan, although he had undermined transparency in 2021 after abandoning the National Institute for Access to Information and Data Protection (INAI) which was for uncovering corruption within the government. Judiciary vote should be restricted to those having the needed level of discernment on law and the justice system, but this seemed the will of the people. I want to warn Mexico to prepare for the bitter consequences of abusing democracy to kill democracy.
Article posted on 30 September 2024, 14:00 (UTC +08:00).
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