The Mexican government announced this Tuesday that it will carry out a “participatory exercise” on January 22, 2023 to ask the population if they want to keep the Armed Forces in the streets to carry out public security tasks.
“A great day will be held in which the people of Mexico will be asked if they agree that the Army and the Navy continue to participate in public security tasks until March 2028,” said Adán Augusto López, Secretary of the Interior, at the government’s daily press conference.
The Mexican president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, revealed that he will do this exercise after failing in the Senate last weeka constitutional reform that would extend until 2028 the powers of the Armed Forces to carry out public safety tasks.
Although he had first promised a consultation, the president now called it a “participatory exercise” because the Constitution prohibits consulting the population on issues of national security and the Armed Forces.
In addition, the Ministry of the Interior (Segob) will organize the vote instead of the National Electoral Institute (INE), the autonomous body in charge of the consultations.
“It will not be binding, but what matters to us is that progress is made in participatory democracy,” argued the president.
The Secretary of the Interior affirmed that they will install at least one “popular opinion reception point” in the 68,989 electoral sections of the country with the support of citizen volunteerswho will also count the results and present them on January 24.
The Government will ask three questions, the first will be: “Do you agree with the creation of the National Guard and its performance so far?“.
The next will be: “Do you think that the Armed Forces, the Army and the Navy should continue doing public security work until 2028 or that they return to their barracks in March 2024?”
And finally: “What is your opinion that the National Guard becomes part of the Ministry of National Defense or depends on the Ministry of the Interior or the Ministry of Public Security?“.
The exercise of opinion will be done while the controversy grows in Mexico over the militarization policies of López Obrador, who this September enacted a legal reform that transfers control of the National Guard to the Army, a body that he promised to keep civilian when he created it in 2019 .
A group of independent experts from the UN Human Rights Council warned on Tuesday that these reforms “have been promoted to the detriment of Mexico’s international obligations on human rights.”
Also, López Obrador’s consultations have caused controversy beforesuch as the one he promoted in 2018 to cancel the construction of the New Mexico International Airport (NAIM) or the one in March 2020 to stop a Constellation Brands brewery plant in the northern city of Mexicali.
“In democracy, the people rule and cannot be ignored,” he defended this Tuesday.
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