Politics: A hard battle fought for transparency, against an avalanche of troubling reforms
President López Obrador’s call to accelerate efforts to consolidate what he defines as the fourth “historical transformation" of the country was in evidence during the final week of the recently concluded session of Congress, in which the governing party unleashed a deluge of legislative proposals. In the Chamber of Deputies, the Morena party's bench employed fast-track procedures to ensure that 20 bills were passed in the absence of any debate and with legislators even denied any opportunity to read the proposed amendments to existing laws, which if also passed by the Senate (a real possibility as Morena enjoys the necessary votes in the upper chamber) would substantially change the relationship between the State and the market and significantly increase presidential power.
The attempt at a legislative end-run looked more complicated in the Senate. There, opposition lawmakers closed ranks around their demand that before the administration’s proposals could be considered it would have to abandon its effort to prevent the naming of at least one of the three councilor seats at the National Institute for Access to Information (INAI). This effort has left inoperable the autonomous body responsible for enforcing the citizenry’s right to information and for guaranteeing the transparency of the multiple agencies and dependencies of the State. They went so far as staging a sit-in, with one senator chaining herself to the podium so business could not proceed.
In this report we concentrate on the content of the reform bills, the outcome of the legislative battle and what this all implies about the direction taken by the government in the final stretch of its six-year term of office.
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