I didn’t support Claudia Scheinbaum for President of Mexico. I thought she was a run-of-the-mill leftist. Moreover, she was and is a puppet for AMLO, her political boss Andrés Manuel López Obrador.
He was and is a radical leftist created and nurtured his entire political career by the PRI, the criminal political party that ran Mexico for seven decades. He ran for President in 2006, lost and pulled a Donald Trump before Trump, crying he was cheated. He lost again in 2012.
Then he organized his own political party called the “Moral Regeneration Party,” or MORENA. His own family members were videotaped being paid with grocery bags full of cash, millions of pesos. These cash-carrying politicos received good paying jobs and concessions from the President.
Leading the pack of AMLO’s supporters were Army and Navy officers who had been appointed to manage large construction jobs throughout the country, including a new airport which few like after another half-finished, award-winning airport was canceled. Those officers are now very rich generals and admirals who won’t have to work in retirement. Most contracts they manage are not from open-bidding processes.
So, now, new President Claudia Scheinbaum takes over the presidency, the first by a woman in one of the two largest countries in North America by population.
Her first demand is that Mexico junk its judicial system to be replaced by judges nominated by her government then elected by voters. Unlike in the United States, however, judges at all levels will be elected. Here federal judges at the top are appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate.
The Mexican judiciary will deteriorate as the ultimate protector of the people. Partisan pressure and corruption will highlight the future of justice in Mexico, thanks to AMLO and Scheinbaum.
Let me be clear, the justice system in Mexico is terrible. They don’t have juries. A judge hears local civil and criminal cases. That judge relies on briefs from lawyers and makes a decision from them along with citations.
But until now it has been different at the state and federal levels. The Mexican supreme court stopped AMLO in his tracks when he tried to amend the constitution so that he could change the judicial system with a majority vote in Congress. The Constitution clearly stated that such a move requires a two-thirds super majority. The court won that one.
In the June 2 election, however, MORENA did win enough congressional and senate seats to come close to a super majority in Congress. And everyone knows it will be easy to pay off a few politicians now to achieve that super majority.
Despite my hope that Scheinbaum would use her scientific training — she has a doctorate in environmental science — the new President appears to be just another political hack guided by AMLO, her political godfather.
For example, AMLO stupidly sent a letter to the King of Spain demanding an apology for the treatment of Mexico’s indigenous people 500 years ago. Spain ignored the secretly-sent letter, then publicly objected. So president-elect Scheinbaum did not send an invitation to the King of Spain to attend her inauguration on Oct. 1.
Scheinbaum has taken some dumb political positions in her life such as opposing the original NAFTA agreement. I thought she had grown up — she hasn’t.
It is not possible to hold the history of 500 years ago to 21st Century standards. Scheinbaum is at fault for not burying the unnecessary insult AMLO made with his letter.
I expected better this early from a new president.
Raoul Lowery Contreras is a Marine Corps veteran, political consultant, prolific author and host of the Contreras Report on YouTube and Facebook.
