México’s President-elect Claudia Sheinbaum presented the constitutional reform initiative for the non-re-election of deputies and senators on July 3, which she is about to send to Congress, along with other reforms she is promoting, less than 100 days before the change of government.
At a press conference, Sheinbaum stated that the change in the law decided during the presidency of former President Felipe Calderón (2006-12), which allowed for the re-election of legislators, “was not based on the people’s demand for re-election.”
“The people of México do not want re-election, and we saw this during the pre-campaign and the campaign,” said the president-elect, who will take office on Oct. 1.
Senator-elect Ernestina Godoy, the incoming head of the Legal Counsel’s Office in Sheinbaum’s administration, explained that the initiative’s document will be sent to the Interior Ministry to be presented to Congress, along with the rest of the reforms promoted by the outgoing government of current President Andrés Manuel López Obrador.
“We are returning to what was the slogan of the Mexican Revolution, which is ‘effective suffrage, no re-election,’ in our history, and at some point, this was disregarded, and Dr. Sheinbaum decided to return and take up the essence of the 1917 Constitution,” Godoy indicated.
In México, the constitution prohibits the re-election of the president.
The future legal advisor summarized the initiative’s content, which includes articles 59, 116, and 122 of the constitution, to eliminate the re-election of deputies and senators, a change proposed by Calderón in 2009.
“Senators and Deputies to the Congress of the Union shall not be re-elected for the term following their mandate,” read the proposed text of Article 59.
In addition, Godoy presented reforms to Article Four of the Constitution to introduce pensions for women aged 60 to 64 and scholarships for students, which Sheinbaum maintained as a promise throughout her campaign.
Sheinbaum pointed out that the reform aims to “reclaim what historically was” and specified that “apart from this, there is the electoral reform, but that will come next.”
Source: OEM
