“Lawyers who defend companies against electricity reform commit treason against their country.” – AMLO

Andrés Manuel López Obrador assured that Mexican lawyers who defend foreign companies against the electricity reform are committing treason. 

MEXICO CITY (Agencies) – In its usual morning conference from the National Palace, Lopez Obrador stated that the natural gas crisis in Texas, United States, only reaffirms his work plan that the Mexican State should be the one to guarantee the energy supply. 

“It is a shame that Mexican lawyers are employed by foreign companies that want to continue plundering Mexico; of course, they are free, but hopefully they will internalize that this is treason,” (SIC) criticized AMLO. 

He remarked that the population’s welfare could not be left in private companies’ hands because it is a fallacy that the free market will solve all problems. He also made it clear that the State cannot fail to fulfill its social responsibility or suffocate private initiative. For this reason, he celebrated the fact that Mexico was able to solve the electric energy crisis in five days because the plants of the Federal Electricity Commission (CFE) that work with coal, fuel oil, and the hydroelectric plants of the Grijalva River were at the disposal of the State. T

According to the President, previous governments wanted to turn the CFE facilities into scrap to keep the electricity market. However, thanks to the fact that his government rescued them, it was possible to face the crisis caused by natural gas. 

Since the beginning of AMLO’s Fourth-Transformation or “4T”, the legal profession has not been spared from the attacks and accusations of Andrés Manuel López Obrador. Yesterday we saw it again.

For the President of the Republic, the legal profession’s free exercise ends when his “interests are violated.” In his eyes, the litigants turn against the country and “its people.”

Since the beginning of the government, many litigators have been threatened, harassed, and persecuted by AMLO’s government —most of them in the fiscal and criminal areas.

Multiple firms such as Javier Coello Trejo’s, José Luis Nassar Daw, Diego Ruiz, Ángel Junquera, and Fernando Ruiz were harassed and pressured to drop high-impact cases and defenses.

The hostilities have already been the object of denunciations abroad before instances such as the International Bar Association and the U.S. Department of Justice itself.

The issue will continue to grow because as long as López Obrador radicalizes his absolutist positions, such as the preferential initiative being voted today for the Electricity Industry Law, resistance will increase.

The chambers and business associations are entrenching themselves in the National Council of Strategic Litigation, a body of lawyers who work pro bono and seek to curtail the authoritarianism and unreasonableness of the 4T.

Their objective, according to AMLO, is to “block” everything they consider the imposition of the current government and its party, Morena, such as the elimination of the trusts, the disappearance of the autonomous regulatory bodies, labeling laws, construction of the new airport, the Mayan Train, the Dos Bocas refinery and other initiatives.

Yesterday’s virulent reaction of the President, who called the lawyers who defend those who oppose his policies “traitors to their homeland,” is part of this fight that will now take place in the electricity sector.

The Business Coordinating Council presided by Carlos Salazar, the Executive Council of Global Companies, and the American Chamber of Commerce warned that this law and others, such as eliminating outsourcing, would give rise to an avalanche of lawsuits.

Very well know and established law firms such as Zinser, Esponda y Gómez Mont, Creel, García-Cuéllar, White & Case; Ritch-Mueller; Galicia Abogados; Holland & Knight; Jones Day or Asali -to mention a few- are the natural legal advisors of the parties that usually come into conflict.

One thing is a fact. This government better get ready for what is to come: defenses and counterattacks in the legal sphere in pursuit of the preservation of the rule of law.