AZMEX POLICY 16-1-19

AZMEX POLICY 16 JAN 2019

Note: Will we be seeing the return of the Brown Shirts?
Danke


After 5 hours of discussion, deputies approve the National Guard
Néstor Jiménez and Enrique Méndez | Wednesday, 16 Jan 2019 18:14

https://www.jornada.com.mx/ultimas/2019/01/16/diputados-aprueban-guardia-nacional-962.html

Deputies of the Morena bench celebrate the vote to create the National Guard.
Photo José Antonio López

Mexico City.

After five hours of discussion, the federal deputies approved in general the constitutional reforms created by the National Guard, in an opinion in which they endorsed a series of modifications to establish that they will not be attached to the Secretariat of National Defense, but to the one of Public Security.

Because it is a reform of the Constitution, it required two thirds of those present. It was endorsed in general with 362 votes in favor of Morena, PRI, PT, PES, PVEM and five PRD members, of the 485 deputies present at the session, for which they exceeded the 310 needed for approval.

The deputies of Morena, PT, PES and the Green Party did not reach that threshold, but it was the fraction of the PRI that moved the balance to reach the support for the reform.

Four deputies abstained: Morena, vice-coordinator Tatiana Clouthier, Lidia García Ayala and Hugo Rafael Ruiz, as well as Ernesto Vargas, on behalf of the PES.

Although he was present at the session, Gerardo Fernández Noroña, who in a video on Twitter expressed his dissatisfaction last night for the tone that acquired the meeting of the legislators with President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, did not vote.

The reservations presented by legislators of all the political parties with the exception of the PRI are discussed this afternoon in the Plenary of the Chamber of Deputies, in a session that is expected to continue for several more hours.

So far, and because the discussion of the reserved items began, the National Guard is defined as a civil police, with a command shared between the Secretaries of Public Security, Defense and Navy, but with members, discipline and military commands .

It is intended that the command of the guard will be distributed in a meeting of chiefs of staff, where the owners of these three units participate, although the deputy coordinator of Morena, Tatiana Clouthier, filed a reservation against that measure.

It also wants to empower the President to "incorporate the elements of the military and naval police", as well as to appoint the commanders of the corporation.

In addition to the opinion that was agreed between the coordinators, the transitory article 5 proposed by Morena in her initiative to reform the Constitution was eliminated.

Such article foresaw that the military and sailors who join the National Guard would be exempted from the prohibition defined in Article 129 of the Constitution, that in times of peace they can not exercise functions other than their discipline, which has remained untouched since 1917.

However, the deputy Lorena Villavicencio (Morena) submitted a reservation to return to that article, which also considers that the command of the National Guard is "transitory" military for five years.

It is a reservation that goes against what Morena's own caucus agreed to remove from the ruling, precisely because it gives the Secretary of National Defense the sole, and not shared, command of the guard.

The addendum to discussion also suppressed the proposal so that the federation had the power to review the consolidation of the state police and, if not, charge the local governments of the federal participations the participation of the National Guard in the entities intervened .

That provision was objected by the governors and mayors, last week, during the hearings of the Congress of the Union.

END