On April 30th, the 62nd Congress’s second ordinary session period will come to an end and there are still several pending issues. The amount of debates, drafts and initiatives within both Chambers as well as in the different commissions are evidence that many of these matters will be kept in the “waiting list” and will have to be addressed either at an extraordinary period to be held on May or June or until the next Congressional cycle in September.
The agenda’s saturation was evident since the beginning of the session period: approximately 80 secondary laws, 66 initiatives as well as several appointments of autonomous bodies remained unresolved. Despite this legislative overload, several pundits claimed that the approval of secondary legislation corresponding to the Constitutional reforms that were ratified in 2013 would be a swift proceeding, at least in arithmetic terms. PRI and its allies (PVEM and PANAL) had the necessary votes to reach the required simple majority in the Chamber of Deputies and would only need the votes of four opposition Senators in order to reach their target. However, less than a week before the period will be over, there are still pending bills that are largely relevant for the country – as a matter of fact, the most important ones, particularly the regulation of competition, energy and telecommunication reforms, in addition to the political-electoral one. With such a scenario, the Legislative Power faces two risks: on one hand, maintaining reforms without secondary legislation jeopardizes the institutional certainty needed to implement them; it also would endanger the so-called capacity to “move Mexico forward”. On the other hand, falling to the temptation of approving all (or at least, the majority) of secondary legislation in this short period will put its quality at risk. Even with such a scenario, there are no reasons to assume that imposing a resolution is possible given that the process of approving secondary legislation involves fundamental interests from several stakeholders. What was party loyalty in 2013 has now turned into a battle for details, something unavoidable in a country as diverse as Mexico.
The slowdown of the discussion and approval proceeding of laws in Congress has led to uncertainty in economic, political as well as institutional matters. The economic side has been especially affected by the telecommunication and energy reforms, since the lack of secondary legislation prevents investments from reaching the aforementioned sectors and the allocation of resources requires judiciary certainty in order to see who gets the corresponding assets. On the other hand, the lack of a legal framework puts the institutional strength of autonomous bodies such as INE (National Electoral Institute) and IFT (Federal Telecommunications Institute) into question since the absence of new rules that are along the same line as the political and telecommunications reforms has forced the aforementioned bodies to operate with previous norms that their counterparts (IFE and COFETEL, respectively) used. All of this opens the possibility of opening a war of “Constitutional protection” that will further delay the implementation of such reforms. This discrepancy will cause controversy given that not only does it involve different rules from the ones foreseen in the reforms but also that the most part of its implementation will be in charge of government bodies as well as its advisors. In addition, the absence of electoral legislation is of great important since it puts at risk the validity of the 2015 electoral process. It is worth remembering that the approved electoral reforms will be applicable next year if, and only if, their secondary legislation is ready 90 days prior to the beginning of the electoral process, which will start in October.
Although the need of approving the legislation of these reforms in a prompt manner is evident, their quality should not be sacrificed just to meet the previously acquired deadlines. It is worth remembering that the time frame set was established by legislators themselves in the transitory articles of these reforms; the accorded deadline expired on December 9th, in the case of telecommunications, and on April 19th, in the case of energy. Legislators will sacrifice the relevance and soundness of these laws, especially when considering how technically sophisticated these issues are, in order to seek that these laws are quickly ratified and showcase a greater “efficiency”. At the end of the process, the result will reflect correlations of national and sectorial strength rather than abstract efficiency measures. Although, ideally, the responsibility of the Legislative Power relies on following up the Constitutional reforms’ accorded procedure, the reality is that the Executive has once again dominated Congress by having the de facto power of green-lightning the aforementioned agenda. Therefore, we’re in the verge of a centralizing process that even though it had the advantage of approving reforms, it also represents a handicap by weakening the feeble system of weights and counterweights within the different powers. What is most relevant and has a tremendous importance for the future is that the Executive Power has been unable to fully implement such potentially decisive reforms as the ones approved in 2013.
CIDAC
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