The plenary of the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation (SCJN) suspended the debate and resolution on the question and budget for the consultation on the revocation of the presidential mandate, due to the fact that during the session there was a failure in the air conditioning of the plenary hall.
During this Monday’s session, five ministers had already presented their position on the question that will be asked on April 10 during the mandate revocation consultation, when the president of the SCJN, Arturo Zaldivar, ordered a break in the session because smoke was observed in the room.
Subsequently, the supreme court reported that there was a technical failure in the air conditioning that caused concentrated steam to be released, without the safety or health of the ministers being compromised at any time.
“The aforementioned technical failure is being addressed and it is expected that tomorrow, February 1, the discussion of the matter listed to be analyzed and resolved by the Plenary of the SCJN can be resumed,” said the Court.
Minister Jorge Mario Pardo Rebolledo presented to the plenary session his draft resolution that contemplates declaring the invalidity and unconstitutionality of the question originally raised in the Federal Law of Revocation of Mandate.
The question establishes: “Do you agree that (name), President of the United Mexican States, have his mandate revoked due to loss of trust or continue in the Presidency of the Republic until his term ends?” .
Minister Pardo Rebolledo proposed that it read as follows: “Do you agree that (name), President of the United Mexican States, have his mandate revoked due to loss of trust?”
Supporting the project, Minister Luis María Aguilar Morales indicated that from the project prepared and later approved by the Union Congress it was made clear that the referendum to revoke the mandate could in no way be interpreted as a ratification or extension of the mandate.
“The purpose of this consultation, which is called exclusively by citizens, is none other than to decide on the early termination or not of the performance of the position (of President of the Republic) due to loss of public confidence, without in any way being interpreted in the sense that this process of revocation of mandate also includes or implies a permanence in the position or its ratification.
“The question contained in article 19 section V of the Federal Law of Revocation of Mandate is not consistent with the constitutional design of the revocation of mandate because it exceeds the purpose that the Constitution grants to this legal figure. I consider that by containing this question, not only the topic referring to the revocation, but also the one related to whether the President of the Republic should continue in office until the end of his term, is expressly including an additional topic that does not correspond to the object of this figure, which discredits the purpose of the mandate revocation consultation, because on the one hand it causes the attention of citizens to be diverted from the proper and exclusive matter of the consultation,” he said.
Minister Loretta Ortiz, who was proposed to the Senate by the president Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador In November of last year, he spoke out against Minister Pardo’s project.
“I do not agree that the aforementioned normative portion denatures the exercise and turns it into a ratification, and I stand for the validity of the contested provisions,” he stressed.
Minister Alberto Pérez Dayán expressed his support for the project, since he considered that by reducing the question, the electoral nature of the procedure is removed.
For his part, Minister Alfredo Gutiérrez Ortiz Mena indicated that the characteristics of the revocation had already been determined by the Constituent, so the Court is only taking care of the constitutionality of the exercise.
“The objective must be clearly to ask only if you want to revoke the mandate or not and the answer must be yes or no. From my point of view, existing the declared will of the constituent power and in the constitutional norm, we should simply subsume this act to those rules”, he mentioned.
jorge.monroy@eleconomista.mx
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