Politics: Judicial power at a crossroads
The January 2 vote by the members of Mexico’s Supreme Court to make Arturo Zaldívar the new chief justice was a significant development in the evolving and at times contentious relationship between the new government and the judiciary, which is seen by many as the last major institutional check on a president that does not look kindly on any counterweight to his ambitious agenda to transform the country’s institutions, and who already controls the two other branches of state.
Raising Zaldívar, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s preferred pick to preside over the court, clearly signaled to the National Palace the court’s willingness to work constructively with AMLO. That message was later underscored when the justices agreed to voluntarily take a 25% pay cut after having pushed back against administration efforts to slash the incomes of most higher level public servants and within the judiciary.
It is now up to the president to decide whether he will respond in kind, or risk an ongoing confrontation with a constitutional court on which he has few natural allies and limited options for being able to stack that body in his favor over the next six years.
An initial test of that relationship will come in the next few weeks when the Supreme Court rules on the constitutionality of the remunerations law, over which the court has already sparred with the president, as well as on the individual suits for writs of amparo filed by thousands of employees and institutions (Banco de México among them) against government efforts to lower their salaries and benefits.
But if the judiciary, which is saddled with a long history of problems of nepotism, corruption, and patronage networks, is to defend its independence and maintain its tattered authority, it must overcome the huge credibility gap it suffers in relation to an enormously popular and austere president. How long can the Supreme Court resist the power of this presidency, knowing that its own rulings might provoke a public backlash? Much depends on whether the judiciary can get its own house in order by introducing sweeping changes that would make the system more transparent, honest and effective. It can only bolster its legitimacy with a thorough internal process of reform and renewal.
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