Process
Status Items Output None Questions None Claims None Highlights Done See section below
Highlights
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“popular direct election of judges is a major risk to the functioning of Mexico’s democracy.” Following the exposition came the threat: “I also think that the debate … will threaten the historic trade relationship we have built, which relies on investors’ confidence in Mexico’s legal framework.”
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AMLO, in fact, did not know what was “good for him.” “How are we going to allow the US ambassador, with all due respect … to opine that what we are doing is wrong?” he asked at his press conference the following Tuesday.
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The same, he added, for the Canadian embassy, whose attitude in seconding the United States had been “pitiful … like a vassal state.” Both countries, he concluded, “would like to interfere in matters that only concern Mexicans. As long as I am here, I will not allow any violation of our sovereignty.”
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two months prior, he had said the exact opposite. The judicial reform “is a Mexican decision,” he stated on June 13. “It is not our decision. We, the United States, cannot impose our opinions in those matters.”
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A more obvious source for the change in discourse, however, is the business community, which has long made use of friendly judges and abused legal proceedings such as amparo (a form of preliminary injunction) to further its own interests in strategic areas such as banking, mining, energy, and water and block legislation that would seek to regulate them.
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For all the lurid warnings of how a democratically elected judiciary would open the door to greater cartel influence, the genuine concern of multinationals is rather that it would close the door on monied interests, their bribes, and the historically cozy relationship they’ve enjoyed with justices that has virtually guaranteed decisions in their favor.
✏️ The propaganda vs the agenda 🔗 View Highlight
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Elections will be nonpartisan, with a prohibition on the use of private financing; instead, candidates will be given free television and radio airtime to make their case.
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crucially, an independent oversight board will be established with powers to sanction, suspend, or even remove corrupt judges from the bench.
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“The fear of a good example,” as journalist and activist Eugene Puryear puts it, indeed.
👓 quote 🔗 View Highlight