Sunday, May 12

Mexican president nonetheless vows to offer National Guard to Army

MEXICO CITY — Mexico’s president vowed Wednesday to strive once more to offer management of the National Guard to the Army, regardless of a Supreme Court ruling towards such a transfer.

The Supreme Court had dominated Tuesday that the Constitution mandates that the Guard, which is now Mexico‘s foremost federal regulation enforcement company, should be stored beneath civilian management inside the Public Safety Department.

But President Andrés Manuel López Obrador stated he hopes his occasion can win a two-thirds majority in Congress within the June 2024 elections, and alter the Constitution. For now, López Obrador stated he would instruct the Public Safety Department – a civilian company – to nominate a retired basic to steer the quasi-military guard.

López Obrador says Army management of the National Guard is required to forestall the power from turning into corrupt, as he claimed the now-dissolved Federal Police had turn into.

About 80% of the National Guard‘s 130,000 members are active-duty troopers on mortgage from the Army and Navy, the place they protect their ranks and advantages. Even civilian recruits are subjected to navy coaching.

Analysts say the usage of troopers on mortgage to the Guard is seemingly making a bookkeeping headache, as a result of they should preserve some Guard officers on navy pay grades and advantages schedules, separate from different members.

López Obrador stated he’ll order Security Secretary Rosa Icela Rodríguez to go to the handfuls of National Guard headquarters all through Mexico to reassure the navy members of the power that they are going to preserve their navy advantages and ranks.

López Obrador additionally lashed out on the eight of 11 Supreme Court justice who voted towards his plan, saying that they had “acted as part of a faction, not on judicial criteria but on political ones.”

The president’s supporters say Mexico has to make use of navy personnel in civilian regulation enforcement as a result of Mexico‘s drug cartels are so highly effective and effectively armed.

But the navy has been implicated in a sequence of human rights abuses which might be starting to taint the National Guard.

In the northern border metropolis of Nuevo Laredo, National Guard members opened fireplace on a civilian SUV over the weekend, killing a pregnant 15-year-old girlfriend and a 54-year-old man and wounding two different folks. The National Guard has not responded to requests for touch upon the deaths.

The killings come almost two months after a military patrol shot to loss of life 5 males in cartel-dominated Nuevo Laredo on Feb. 26. Four troopers have been charged in that case.

The Supreme Court dominated Tuesday that final 12 months’s switch of the National Guard from civilian to navy management was unconstitutional as a result of López Obrador created it as a civilian power in a 2019 Constitutional reform and positioned it beneath the management of the civilian public safety ministry.

Last 12 months, López Obrador determined to vary that, however his ruling occasion and allies not had the mandatory majority in Congress to move constitutional adjustments.

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