Politics: Rule of law increasingly in doubt
President Andrés Manuel López Obrador recently held a new round of meetings with most of the main business chambers, councils and confederations clearly aimed at giving the impression that, in AMLO’s words, relations between his government and the private sector “could not be better.” But the head of the Executive Council of Global Companies, which brings together transnational firms with operations in Mexico, reported that they had asked the President for clearer signs that his government is committed to assuring the rule of law, a point on which the government has given the business community plenty of reasons for concern.
AMLO is on record insisting that if forced to choose between the law and justice, he would not hesitate to choose the latter, and he and others in his administration have provided plenty of evidence they are willing to dispense with legal niceties whenever they might get in their way. A prime point of concern is an apparent penchant for illegally disclosing the results of criminal investigations to discredit officials he sees as obstacles to his political project. The most recent and troubling of these were the ways in which leaks and threats of asset seizure may have been used to force Supreme Court Justice Eduardo Medina Mora to resign as the President seeks to stack the courts with people more to his liking. He apparently already enjoys enough support to keep any of his government’s actions from being ruled unconstitutional.
And two additional problems were recently added to the already lengthy list of government decisions and policy moves that have shaken business confidence in the government: administration bills on matters of tax evasion, and asset seizure and forfeiture. The former would make tax evasion involving the use of false receipts a form of “organized crime,” for which those charged would be automatically subjected to pre-trial detention with no possibility of bail. The latter proposal will allow public prosecutors to seize the financial and material assets of anyone accused of acts of corruption or organized crime, before they stand trial.
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