Judicial reform opinion read and Congress is called for Tuesday

Mexico City. The Board of Directors of the Chamber of Deputies publicized this Sunday the ruling on the reform of the Judicial Branch of the Federation, and summoned the deputies of the 66th Legislature for next Tuesday, September 3 at 10 a.m. in the plenary session of San Lázaro, to begin the formal process of analysis of the initiative.

Following the General Congress Session, in which the sixth and final report of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador was delivered, the President of the Board of Directors, Ifigenia Martínez, called for a first ordinary session to comply with the process of publicizing the aforementioned opinion.

From the beginning of the meeting, the opposition parties expressed their dissatisfaction by arguing that the injunctions granted yesterday by two district judges, based in Morelos and Chiapas, to prevent the reform of the PJF from being discussed, prevented the Chamber from beginning the legislative procedures for it.

The coordinator of the PRI bench, Rubén Moreira, even announced that the tricolor deputies would withdraw from the Session Hall. “We believe that we cannot go to a session to debate the ruling because there are suspensions of two judges, and I warn you that we are going to withdraw,” said the Coahuilense amid cries of rejection from Morena, PT and PVEM.

In the same vein, PAN member Agustín Rodríguez Torres said that the PAN would not be able to endorse the agenda of the session “because we are not going to violate suspensions granted by federal courts.”

He also argued that many of the new deputies had not participated in the commissions where the reform to the PJF was decided, nor in the National Dialogues on the subject, so he proposed holding open parliament forums to debate the reform again, in addition to creating a “working group made up of all parliamentary groups.”

In contrast, Ricardo Mejía Berdeja (PT) stressed that the suspensions issued by two district judges to prevent the discussion of the reform of the PJF are unacceptable, since they are injunctions “promoted by their fellow judges. Trials are promoted between them and they themselves grant themselves suspensions. We propose to dismiss these pseudo suspensions, because they are legal nothing, and to continue with the process of constitutional reform.”

For his part, the coordinator of the Morena deputies, Ricardo Monreal Ávila, went to the podium to ask the deputies to reject the appeals of the aforementioned judges because said action “is inappropriate, because it violates the Constitution and because it flagrantly violates the principle of legality.”

As he explained in a video posted on social media on Saturday, the president of the Political Coordination Board pointed out that Article 61 of the Amparo Law “clearly states that in the case of additions and reforms to the Constitution, the amparo trial is inadmissible, along with all its derivations.”

Likewise, he pointed out, articles 39 and 135 of the Magna Carta indicate the right of the people to give themselves the system of government they decide, and the power of the Congress of the Union to modify the Constitution by qualified majority. Likewise, he read three jurisprudences on the impossibility of the Judicial Branch interfering in the decisions of the Legislative Branch. “Do you have any doubts?” he summarized sarcastically, as if he were in class.

“That is why we do not accept the tyranny of the cap and gown, of incompetent judges who now want to be presented as heroes, when they are nothing more than vulgar violators of the Constitution. (…) I am sure that, with this resolution issued for non-legal purposes, the district judges, magistrates and ministers who know the law must feel ashamed of such chicanery. In my town, they call them huizachero lawyers,” stressed Monreal, amid cries of “they want to cry, they want to cry!”, directed by the majority of the ruling party towards the opposition deputies.