“AMLO’s consultation unconstitutional” – Minister of the Supreme Court Luis Aguilar

The Minister of the Supreme Court, Luis María Aguilar, presented this Thursday a project in which he considers that the widespread consultation to submit five ex-presidents of Mexico to investigation and trial is unconstitutional because it violates the human rights of those under investigation and of the victims. 

MEXICO CITY (Times Media Mexico) The proposal made by López Obrador will be debated next October 1 in the plenary session of the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation (SCJN), where the 11 ministers that compose it will discuss, based on Aguilar’s proposal, if the consultation continues or not. Aguilar’s project indicates that the State is obligated to investigate crimes, through judicial institutions, without putting it up for public debate. 

“The object of the popular consultation requested is unconstitutional from its origin since the obligations of the authorities to investigate, prosecute, and sanction criminal acts cannot be dissociated from the rights of people to have access to prompt, complete, and impartial justice, to due process, and, in general, to the correct functioning of the institutions of the Mexican state,” states the text written by the minister. López Obrador began the legal process to bring Carlos Salinas de Gortari, Ernesto Zedillo, Vicente Fox, Felipe Calderón, and Enrique Peña Nieto to Court on September 15. 

The process implies an analysis by the Mexican Supreme Court on the relevance of the consultation, according to the rules determined from the Constitution and a study on the question that would lead the plebiscite. Minister Aguilar has received harshness the Mexican President’s arguments to defend the consultation and has defined them as a “concert of unconstitutionalities.” 

“The popular consultation cannot have the effect of perpetuating human rights violations by denying justice, which would mean an attack against the Constitution itself,” adds Aguilar. Furthermore, he explained that posing the question goes “against the pillars of Mexican democracy” because it implies changing how the Mexican government functions and contradicts the Constitution.

The 43-page text breaks down each of the points proposed by López Obrador. In his morning conference, the President said that Aguilar’s diagnosis is similar to the one former President Felipe Calderón recently argued, but assured that he would wait for the Court’s decision in the next few days. “I consider that there is no violation of human rights, of the guarantees of citizens because in the case that these trials are carried out, they have to be done by the competent authority within the framework of legality,” AMLO stated.