by Mexico News Daily
The Mexican government’s relationship with the United States Embassy in Mexico is “on pause,” President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said Tuesday, five days after U.S. Ambassador Ken Salazar voiced concerns about his proposed judicial reform.
López Obrador also told reporters at his morning press conference that the government was pausing ties with the Canadian Embassy in light of the Canadian ambassador’s remarks about the same proposal.
“How are we going to allow [Salazar] to opine that what we’re doing is wrong,” he said.
“We’re not going to tell him to leave the country, we’re not doing that, but we do have to read the constitution, which is like reading him the riot act,” López Obrador said.
He said that the government’s relationship with Salazar is “good, but on pause,” explaining that the suspension began immediately after the ambassador spoke out against his judicial reform proposal, which could be passed by Congress as soon as next month.
López Obrador — who would like to see the proposal passed before he leaves office on Oct. 1 — also said that Mexico’s relationship with the U.S. Embassy in Mexico is on pause, but the broader bilateral relation “continues.”
Nevertheless, he made it clear that he believes that Salazar was speaking on behalf of the U.S. government, not just himself, when he released his statement on the judicial reform last Thursday. López Obrador also asserted that the United States and Canada acted in concert.
In his statement last Thursday, Salazar said he believed that the “popular direct election of judges is a major risk to the functioning of Mexico’s democracy.”
“… I also think the debate over the direct election of judges … as well as the fierce politics if the elections for judges in 2025 and 2027 were to be approved, will threaten the historic trade relationship we have built, which relies on investors’ confidence in Mexico’s legal framework,” the ambassador added.
“Direct elections would also make it easier for cartels and other bad actors to take advantage of politically motivated and inexperienced judges,” Salazar said.
For his part Canadian Ambassador Graeme Clarke said in an interview published late last week that Canadian investors were concerned about the judicial reform proposal.
López Obrador announced last Friday that the government was sending diplomatic notes to both the United States and Canada in light of the ambassadors’ remarks.
Salazar subsequently said that “the concerns” he expressed about the direct election of judges were made in the “spirit of collaboration.”
He also said he was willing to engage in dialogue with Mexico’s leaders.
On Monday, López Obrador said that he and the U.S. ambassador — a semi-regular visitor to the National Palace — were going to give each other some “time” before reconvening.
The president claimed that the government of Canada acted in an “embarrassing” way by joining the United States’ protest against the judicial reform proposal.
“It looks like an associate state, [they acted] together,” he said.
“They wanted to interfere in matters that only correspond to Mexicans,” López Obrador added.
He said that the pause in the relationships with both the United States and Canadian embassies would continue until representatives of the two countries learned to respect the sovereignty of Mexico — which Salazar has stressed he does, including in an X post early Tuesday afternoon.
“We’re not going to give them advice nor say that this is good or this is bad,” López Obrador said, even though he has been critical of the U.S. government and Congress for not approving greater funding for regional development programs that could help reduce migration, and of the U.S. embargo against Cuba.
“We want them to be respectful — for there to be a reciprocal relationship with regard for respect for sovereignty,” the president said.
Opponents of the judicial reform proposal say that the direct election of judges from candidates nominated by the sitting president, the Congress and the judiciary itself threatens the independence of Mexico’s justice system. Judicial elections, in some cases, would coincide with political elections, a situation that critics believe could lead to politicization of the judiciary.
If the proposal is approved, all 11 justices of the Supreme Court — which has handed down rulings against the current government’s policies and projects — could be replaced next year.
If a majority of justices sympathetic to the agenda of incoming president Claudia Sheinbaum are elected to the Supreme Court, Sheinbaum’s capacity to enact — and maintain — policies that face legal challenges could be enhanced.
Approval of the judicial reform proposal is likely given that the ruling Morena party and its allies will have a supermajority in the lower house of Congress and a strong majority in the Senate.
The last straw?
Beyond Salazar’s statement about the proposed judicial reform, López Obrador has been irked by the United States’ funding of organizations he regards as opponents of his government.
Earlier this month, he once again railed against the United States government’s funding — via the U.S. Embassy in Mexico — of Mexicans Against Corruption and Impunity, an anti-graft group that has exposed alleged corruption in his administration.
“It’s outrageous … that a government that is a friend, a neighbor, is financing a group that opposes a legal, legitimate government. What’s that called? Interventionism,” López Obrador said Aug. 14 after announcing that he would send a letter to U.S. President Joe Biden to complain about the issue.
In light of Salazar’s remarks, the president reiterated that the federal government doesn’t accept “interference” in Mexico’s internal affairs.
“We don’t accept any representative of foreign governments intervening in matters that are solely up to us to resolve,” he said.
The Mexican government has also been less than satisfied with the information the U.S. government has provided about the arrests of alleged Sinaloa Cartel leaders Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada and Joaquín Guzmán López in New Mexico last month.
The Federal Attorney General’s Office said earlier this month that the United States Department of Justice had not provided a range of information it requested about the case.
