Relations between Mexico’s executive branch and supreme court (SCJN) have been on thin ice since Norma Lucía Piña Hernández took over as SCJN president from Arturo Zaldívar, an ally of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, on 2 January [WR-23-01]. Since then, López Obrador has levelled criticisms at the SCJN, accusing its justices of favouring criminals, and being untrustworthy, corrupt, and hypocritical. Tensions came to a head on 2 March, when an apparent death threat surfaced against Piña on social media, which Mexico’s judicial sector and the political opposition stated was a consequence of López Obrador’s antagonistic rhetoric.
When the new SCJN president was named at the start of the year, López Obrador immediately acknowledged that he and Piña had their differences. Nominated to the SCJN by former president Enrique Peña Nieto (2012-2018), Piña has voted against some of López Obrador’s key initiatives. While stating this was fine as the executive and judicial branches were independent of each other, López Obrador has ratcheted up criticisms of the court and its justices since her election.
Tensions have been exacerbated by the fact that the fate of the president’s Plan B electoral reform, recently passed by the senate, lies in the hands of the SCJN. The court must rule on a series of constitutional complaints against the reform filed by the political opposition and the national electoral institute (INE). López Obrador has said that it would expose the “hypocrisy and corruption” of magistrates sitting on the SCJN if they were to annul the electoral reform and confirm that they are allied with the conservative oligarchy. Eight of the 11 magistrates on the SCJN would have to declare the law unconstitutional for it to be rescinded.
The most recent criticism came on 2 March, when López Obrador claimed that since Piña had taken over as president of the SCJN there had been “a wave of resolutions in favour of alleged criminals”. Hours after López Obrador made this statement, an online death threat targeted at Piña went viral on social media. A user on Twitter had shared an image on 28 February declaring Piña to be “the problem”, accompanied by an image of a bullet, described as “the solution”, under the caption “excellent idea”.
Mexican judges and magistrates united in condemnation of the post, with Mexico’s national association of federal judges (Jufed) calling for “a professional investigation” into the incident, which it said was a consequence of a “discourse of hatred”, while the Mexican bar association (BMA) argued that “slandering judges without evidence…divides Mexican society [and] is not fitting for democrats or the leaders that the country needs”. The political opposition issued similar responses, with the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI) stating the threat was a result of polarisation generated by political discourse that sought to influence the independence of the court.
However, rather than denounce the death threat, López Obrador appeared to downplay it. In a press conference on 3 March, he even suggested that the death threat had been issued by one of the judges themselves saying they were capable of this as they were so “conservative”. Piña, meanwhile, has responded by once again stressing the importance of judicial independence. During a meeting with judges and magistrates in Mexico City (CDMX) on 5 March, Piña urged justices to act with independence and responsibility when emitting rulings and to be “guardians of the constitution”, saying that, “if we act with…the caution of judges, without confusing that with cowardice, all will go well”.
Yasmín Esquivel Mossa
While casting doubt on the credibility of many of the SCJN justices, President López Obrador has remained steadfast in his defence of justice Yasmín Esquivel Mossa in the row over her undergraduate law thesis. On 11 January, Mexico’s national university (Unam) announced that Esquivel’s thesis was a “substantial copy” of one submitted by another student. López Obrador, who nominated Esquivel to the SCJN in 2019, has said the affair has been overblown by the press and that the accusations of plagiarism have political motivations, a belief which he repeated on 3 March.