Politics: Dismantling checks and balances
President López Obrador continues to make significant progress in concentrating power in the presidency to the detriment of all other political institutions. By steadily re-engineering and re-staffing the entire institutional infrastructure, the administration is eliminating any potential restraints on its policies and programs. As a result, the complex system of counterweights essential to any modern democracy is being significantly weakened.
Last week the government took another long expected leap forward in this quest by imposing a political loyalist as head of the National Human Rights Commission (CNDH), one who lacks the necessary qualifications and whose highly questionable election in the Senate further undercuts any semblance of credibility the new CNDH president might have otherwise enjoyed. The move came after the commission had issued numerous critical opinions of policies implemented or promoted by the governing party, and the imposition of Rosario Piedra prompted the resignation of half of the CNDH Consultative Board members.
Similar efforts are underway to purge the leaders of other autonomous bodies and replace or redefine those and other essential institutions in a way that could give officials unfettered sway over major aspects of decision making, including most if not all regulatory institutions. More ominously, AMLO’s government has made major headway neutralizing even the Supreme Court by placing enough justices sympathetic to the President to keep the court from determining that any aspect of official policy or action runs afoul of the Constitution.
So far the government has also wrenched control over the energy regulatory, and national hydrocarbon commissions, giving itself free rein to redefine energy policy in any way it desires. And its control over Coneval means it can manage evaluations of its own social policies rather than be subject to independent oversight.
At the same time, room for political competition is being squeezed both by slashing public funding for parties in half and by weakening the electoral authority while at the same time preparing to elect a new INE chairman to the President’s liking along with an increasing number of AMLO enthusiasts to the institute’s governing body. This is an especially troubling development ahead of the 2021 midterms and the 2024 presidential elections.
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