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Editor's Note: Carlos G. Guerrero is president of Human Rights and Mexican Strategic Litigation. He has been an associate professor of Administrative Law at the Escuela Libre de Derecho (Mexico) and has collaborated as a columnist in various media such as Revista Nexos, GTDT: Market Intelligence, International Journal of Transparency and Integrity, CNN in Spanish, among others. He is a lawyer and teacher in Government and Public Administration.
(CNN Spanish) - A federal judge in Mexico will decide this week if the attorney general of the Republic, Alejandro Gertz Manero, duly appointed María de la Luz Mijangos Borja as the nation's anti-corruption prosecutor. A judicial resolution may verify the disdain for citizen participation and for the transparency of those who conduct the procurement of justice in Mexico.
Alejandro Gertz Manero, the attorney general of Mexico, went down in history as the first person to command a new and renewed body of justice. A few weeks before his appointment, in January 2019, the entire country witnessed how the Attorney General's Office - that of delectable practices and continued presidential protection - changed skin to become an autonomous and independent prosecutor's office. political.
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But the augury was not entirely hopeful for those who had followed the appointment of the head of the Office of the Attorney General of the Republic, because not only the list had been made up of persons similar to the president of Mexico, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, but because Gertz Manero was at that time the person in charge of the Attorney General's Office. Thus, the "automatic pass" was carried out and with that, which in my opinion would be the materialization of the first act of corruption of the government of the so-called Fourth Transformation - as the chief executive calls its management.
The tree had already begun to grow crooked and its fruits could not have been perfect or pure. With the development of the management of Gertz, the untouchable would have, apparently, also begun to reproduce vitiated and negligent acts in the conformation of the teams and in the designation of the holders of the Specialized Prosecutors.
The Specialized Prosecutors, by provision of the Constitution and the Organic Law of the Attorney General's Office, must be independent. They would not be simple subprocuratories at the service of the attorney, but specialized prosecutors with special powers and with technical and management autonomy.
The Prosecutor's Office Specialized in Combating Corruption was no exception. As the most important body in the country in the fight against the phenomenon of corruption - it is the arm of the State that investigates corruption crimes and punishes them with jail - that Prosecutor's Office deserved to have a head that had the consensus of civil society, in whose designation process the principles of proactive transparency and participation of all sectors were respected to decide which person was suitable to represent the State in that task.
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This was not only the desire of the architects of a new paradigm in the fight against corruption, but also an express provision of the legislators - even of a crushing majority of the National Regeneration Movement (Morena), the party of President López Obrador - . The Organic Law of the Prosecutor's Office establishes it clearly.
However, none of that was respected by the attorney general of Mexico. In a process plagued by irregularities, in which there was no public call, or participation of expert organizations, or a loophole of transparency, let alone motivated decisions, it was like, apparently with the complicity of the Mexican Senate - under an overwhelming majority of legislators from Morena–, in March 2019, María de la Luz Mijangos Borja was elected as the head of the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office.
To the call of tremendous act of corruption, civil society was aggrieved and harmed. Through the organization Human Rights and Mexican Strategic Litigation, a trial was presented challenging the illegal appointment in violation of the right to live in an environment free of corruption and to have a good public administration.
The process, in which the attorney general and “his” anti-corruption prosecutor have made it clear that he has the non-delegable power of appointment - on which no civil society organization has the right to intervene, let alone question - is about of coming to an end.
In this second week of January 2020, the 10th District Judge in Administrative Matters in Mexico City will decide whether the Attorney General of the Republic complied with international standards and with the law on the appointment of senior public office of the Prosecutor . In the file, there would be sufficient elements to sentence the attorney general to appoint a new person under the parameters that ensure the autonomy of the Mexican Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office.