Andrea Becerril, Fabiola Martinez and Fernando Camacho
La Jornada Newspaper
Sunday 18 August 2024, page 3
The decision to revise the President’s initiative to extend the five current members of the Upper House of the Electoral Tribunal of the Judicial Branch of the Federation (TEPJF) until 2027 is due to the fact that it is the body responsible for resolving challenges that may arise in the extraordinary election of judges, magistrates and ministers, which will take place in June 2025, which is proposed to be financed from the resources of the Trusts of the Judicial Branch of the Federation (PJF), which is currently in litigation.
The draft opinion on reform emphasises that TEPJF members cannot be replaced at this time.
However, this decision will allow the five judges, many of them highly questionable, who were involved in the fight for the presidency of that court to remain in office for three more years, despite the fact that they have been in office since 2016. And even Reyes Rodríguez and Felipe Fuentes will end their management next October.
Meanwhile, the terms of TEPJF presidents Monica Soto, Janine Otalora and Felipe de la Mata will expire in October 2025, as part of an orderly replacement that has so far been disrupted, as two vacancies have remained since October last year.
Soto became president of the court in January of this year, after he managed to remove two of his colleagues – with the support of Reyes Rodríguez – and the same happened with Otalora, who was supported by his colleagues to become president (from October 2016 to January 2019), and was then forced to resign, which has been a common practice and conflict in the upper house for over five years.
Due to this, in a draft opinion being analyzed in the Chamber of Deputies it was established that, to avoid these conflicts, the presidency of the TEPJF and the Supreme Court would rotate every two years, and would be occupied by the magistrates who obtain the largest number of votes in the ballot boxes.
When asked about the possibility of continuing for three more years as electoral magistrate, Reyes Rodríguez commented that his appointment expires on October 31, and that any other date that involves prediction is a legislative working hypothesis on which it is not appropriate to comment unless approved by the Congress of the Union.
In the draft opinion of the Commission of Constitutional Points of San Lázaro, chaired by the morenista Juan Ramiro Robledo, it is specified that in the extraordinary procedure of 2025 the two missing judges of the upper court will be elected, as well as 15 regional ones, for a term of six years.
Most of the changes in the judicial reform proposed by López Obrador are contained in 11 transitional articles.
Regarding the financing of the extraordinary elections of June 2025 and 2027, another transition specified that it would be paid with the 24 billion pesos of the 14 PJF trusts, which were abolished by Congress and were to be returned to the treasury of the Federation, but the opposition filed an appeal and the Court suspended the effects of that reform.
Nevertheless, it is considered financially feasible and fair to provide that the funds necessary for the implementation of the reform come from the resources of the trusts, which guarantee the respect of the labour rights of workers in the judicial branch.
The election of judges, magistrates and ministers will be in charge of the National Electoral Institute (INE), and given that it will have to face assumptions or situations that are not clearly specified in the law and that it is a process remarkable for its magnitude, complexity and novelty, it gives tools and powers that allow you to make immediate operational decisions within a framework of legality and certainty.
In that sense, a third paragraph was added to the eighth transitional article that establishes that the INE must implement the laws issued as a result of this reform, so the provisions of Constitutional Article 105 will not apply, which provides that the electoral rules must be promulgated and published at least 90 days before the start of the implementation process.