Last Sunday, with pomp and circumstance, Mexico City (CDMX) authorities, headed by Mayor Miguel Ángel Mancera, presented the new local constitution at the town’s main square, the Zócalo.
Surely in the Zócalo neighborhood the celebration did not pass unnoticed. Just as Mayor Mancera was touting the achievement of the 100 people who participated in the writing of the new constitution, right across the street at the Metropolitan Cathedral the entire Mexican Catholic Church was fuming.
Besides the already approved “reproductive rights” and “all types of family structure,” namely abortion and same sex marriages, the document approves the use of medical marijuana and “the right to a dignified death” meaning euthanasia.
Surely there are many more issues in the constitution that will go into full effect next September 17, such as elected officials not enjoying de facto legal immunity and all public posts being revocable, something well received by the population and which do not infringe on church morality.
On Sunday the weekly Catholic Church newsletter “Desde La Fe” (From the Faith) blasted the “majorities” enacting the constitution as “they have evaded the harsh reality of bloodshed and cruelty in Mexico City. This is a reality, hiding the immoral enactment of euthanasia and the lucrative and abominable abortion business, which is worse than drug trafficking.”
At present, the Church hierarchy, through conservative National Action Party (PAN) member and head of the Feasible City Association José Luis Luege Tamargo, tried to bring together enough signatures to take the new constitution to referendum: But up until last January 31, the day the new constitution was approved, he had garnered 35,000 signatures, which was deemed as insufficient to enact the referendum.
Yet Luege Tamargo is questioning the legality of the new document as “it is not the the mayor who must draft and present the document, but the Constitutional Assembly,” as the CDMX house of representatives is known.
Luege Tamargo also claims political cronyism among politicians of the Institutional Revolutionary (PRI) and Democratic Revolution (PRD) parties as “the distribution of Constitutional Assembly was a total fix from the beginning as 40 percent of participants were chosen by design, which brought about an artificial majority. It was all rigged so that PRI and PRD would have a majority.”
Whether the accusation of rigging a majority was correct or not, it stems from a dissident Catholic faction and needless to say it goes against the values this particular religion. In theory, a majority in the nation and Mexico City has to propose.
Other issues that were not approved in the new constitution were prostitution legalization, reducing voting age to 16 years old and a court to defend the Magna Carta.
The drafting of the new CDMX Constitution began on Sept. 16, 2016 with the selection of draftees who for the most part were seasoned politicians and constitutionalist lawyers who took into consideration “the voices and aspirations of the citizens” of a metropolis that for the past 20 years has leaned to the left and is amiable to liberal thinking.
The Catholic Church was not invited to participate in the discussions of each of the concepts that will go into effect in a few months and surely would have placed stumbling blocks.
This Constitution is part of turning the Federal District status of Mexico City into statehood as under the Federal District regime it was subject to the command by the Federal government and very much under the direct aegis of the President of the Republic.
But regardless of the fretting from the Catholic Church hierarchy, the new CDMX Constitution is a done deal.
