AMLO plans to eliminate article 33 of the Constitution. Why?

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The president of Mexico assured that there should be nothing that limits freedom.

The Mexican president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, announced this Monday that he will propose a reform to the article 33 of the Constitution, which allows the expulsion of foreigners for “interfering” in politics and which in recent years has caused controversy, particularly by Spaniards.

“We are already today or tomorrow sending an initiative to modify the Constitution on article 33 because before, the one who was considered a pernicious foreigner because he questioned the Government was deported, we are going to remove that,” he indicated in his daily Press conference.

The president referred to the constitutional article that empowers the Executive to “expel foreigners from the national territory based on the law” and that “foreigners may not in any way interfere in the political affairs of the country.”

The clause has aroused controversy in recent years, such as last December, when former President Felipe Calderón (2006-2012) asked to use the article against Spaniard Abraham Mendieta, adviser and supporter of the ruling National Regeneration Movement (Morena) party.

That same month, the Ministry of the Interior (SEGOB) removed from the list of “personas non grata” the Spanish singer Manu Chao, who in 2009 criticized the Government of Mexico, then Calderón’s, for the repression of the protests in San Salvador Atenco in 2006.

While in 2021, supporters of MORENA asked to apply Article 33 to the Vox leaders who went to Congress to present the Madrid Charter, something that López Obrador refused.

On the other hand, the Federal Electoral Tribunal decreed in 2018 that the singer Belinda, who has Spanish nationality despite living in Mexico, “violated” the Constitution and the electoral law for participating in political acts for MORENA.

And in 2014 there was a controversy with Chile over the arrest of the Chilean musician Lawrence Maxwell Ilabaca during a protest after the disappearance of the 43 Ayotzinapa students in September of that year.

“There should be nothing that limits freedom and all those alleged crimes that have to do with insulting authority must be eliminated,” López Obrador now considered.

The president argued that the clause comes from the Constitution of 1836 but promised that his government works for freedom by also eliminating the sanctions provided for “insults to the president.”

Source: MVS Noticias