Mexico City. The House of Representatives’ Constitutional Affairs Committee has already prepared the draft opinion on judicial reform, which includes more than 100 changes to President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s initiative on the matter.
Among the key changes is that the election by popular vote of the nine ministers who will henceforth make up the Supreme Court will be carried out entirely in an extraordinary electoral process in 2025, but in the case of judges and magistrates there will be a gradual process.
Half of the latter, some 800 positions, will be up for election in the extraordinary election of 2025, which will include vacant positions and early retirements, and in 2027, in an ordinary election, 50 percent of judges and magistrates will be elected.
The minister who has obtained the highest number of votes will be president of the Supreme Court.
The coordinators of Morena, PT and PVEM in the Chamber of Deputies, Ignacio Mier, Reginaldo Salazar and Carlos Alberto Puente, accompanied by the president of the Constitutional Affairs Committee, Juan Ramiro Robledo, made the announcement and specified that the draft opinion will be made public this afternoon and there will be a period of 10 days for the parties to analyze it.
The intention, they stressed, is to vote in that commission within two weeks.
The Morena coordinator, Ignacio Mier, highlighted that 60 percent of the changes to the presidential initiative were made based on contributions that arose during the discussion forums of the reform in which different instances of the judicial branch participated, specifically 66 people.
He said that the draft ruling also includes changes that address concerns about the criteria for selecting judges. The new draft establishes that judges, magistrates and ministers who decide to participate in the election process may participate without any evaluation requirements.
For candidates who are running for office for the first time, there will be evaluation bodies in each of the branches of government, that is, in the Supreme Court, the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies. In the event that there is a greater number of candidates than planned, a drawing of lots will be held, giving preference to women.
Those with the highest scores will be chosen, and in the event of a tie, a raffle will be used, in a transparent process, not like before when friends and cronies were favored, Mier said. He insisted that there will not be a “blank check.”
In this regard, the president of the Constitutional Affairs Committee, Juan Ramiro Robledo, explained that the changes in this draft opinion include a series of mechanisms that ensure
“that the best Mexicans, men and women, will be working in an open and highly democratized judiciary from now on.”
He specified that judges, magistrates and ministers who are elected will undergo two evaluations. One before participating – from which current judges will be exempt – and another one year after taking office. “The disciplinary court will replace the Judicial Council, will review their management, will put them to work to train themselves more and if they do not improve, they will be removed.
Current judges and magistrates, he stressed, may even compete for promotion, becoming magistrates or ministers.
Deputy Mier also stated that the tenth transitory article clearly establishes that the acquired rights of the workers of the judiciary will not be violated, nor will their retirement benefits, which are included in two trust funds for health and supplements to their benefits and salaries.
The draft ruling, he said, guarantees the people of Mexico the ability to access justice in a prompt, expeditious and free manner.
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– 2024-08-20 00:14:47
