The new commissioners of the National Institute of Transparency, Access to Information and Protection of Personal Data (INAI), Ana Yadira Alarcon Marquez and Rafael Luna Alviso, Those who were elected by the Senate on March 1, were vetoed by President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, so they will not be able to join that body, while the Upper House must hold a new election.
In a notification sent to the Senate, which has already been turned over to the presidency of the board of directors of that sovereignty, the president argued that “Rafael Luna Alviso does not appear on the list of people who had stood out for their participation ” in the election process for the two INAI vacancies.
Therefore, the president “objects the appointments of Ana Yadira Alarcón Márquez and Rafael Luna Alviso as commissioners of the National Institute of Transparency, Access to Information and Protection of Personal Data,” the document detailed.
This is the first time that a Mexican president makes use of his constitutional powers to veto an election of INAI commissioners, since the creation of this body in 2002, when it was called the Federal Institute for Access to Public Information (IFAI).
Earlier this month, Ana Yadira Alarcón Márquez and Rafael Luna Alviso were elected INAI commissioners for a seven-year term. The first obtained 78 votes in favor in the plenary session of the Senate, while the second achieved the approval of 74 senators, despite the fact that he was the second worst rated candidate in the selection process.
In fact, the Observatory of Public Appointments, a civil organization that is part of Fundar and Article 19, denounced that Luna Alviso’s profile was not the most suitable to fill the position of INAI commissioner, due to the fact that his evaluation was deficient.
This organization considered that the Senate preferred to choose a candidate close to the senator from Morena Ricardo Monreal Avila, thus repeating the “discretionary practices, capular and share exchange”.
In addition, Rafael Luna Alviso received an administrative sanction in 2016 for not making his declaration of conflict of interest transparent, when he served as general director of Public Security of the current Cuauhtémoc City Hall of Mexico City. Even the aspiring INAI adviser, omitted from your resume having held this position when Ricardo Monreal was the delegate of that demarcation.
Controversy before the SCJN
Faced with the presidential objection to the appointment of those who had been designated by the Senate as members of the INAI, the organization announced that it will present a Constitutional Controversy before the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation, due to the failure to appoint the members of its plenary session.
Among the arguments of the controversy, they highlight “that the lack of appointment of two people as members of the Plenary, from the first day of April 2022, directly violates the institutional design established by the Constitution for this autonomous body and violates the principle of collegiality that characterizes it,” the INAI said in a statement.
The election of Luna Alviso and Alarcón Márquez as INAI commissioners was made by the Senate after – last February – the Seventeenth District Court for Administrative Matters of Mexico City ordered that sovereignty to issue an agreement to cover the two vacancies that the agency had maintained since April 2022.
Given this delay, the judge Celina Angelica Quintero Rico It granted a provisional suspension to the INAI Consultative Council and to the civil organization Consejo Nacional de Litigio Estratégico, who jointly promoted an Amparo Trial against the omissions of the Senate.
The INAI Plenary is made up of seven commissioners, and can function with a minimum of five, as it has done since April of last year, however, at the end of this month of March there will be another vacancy in that institution, so that, if the replacements of the two directors who left their position in 2022 are not appointed beforehand, the body will no longer be able to meet or take any decision on transparency.
new choice
The Mexican Constitution establishes, in its article 6, section A, section VIII, that the appointment of INAI commissioners can be objected to by the President of the Republic, therefore -after the veto- senators must make a new candidate proposal , although these no longer have to be elected with a vote of two-thirds of the Senate.
The vote that will now be required is three fifths of the members of the Upper House present at the session.
In the event that the second appointment is also objected to by the president, the Chamber of Senators, also with a vote of three fifths of its members present, will designate the commissioner who will fill the vacancy in the INAI.
The latter means that, if a second veto is presented, the candidate to be INAI commissioner who is elected in the third ballot can no longer be objected to by the head of the federal Executive.
MORE NEWS:
surya palaces Journalist and lawyer, specialist in legal analysis and human rights. She has been a reporter, radio host and editor.
