2011-08-04 
Posted by: badanov 

By Chris Covert

A legislative committee in the Mexican Chamber of Deputies endorsed the National Security law Tuesday recommending that the Senate pass the law in the next regular session, according to Mexican news sources.

The controversial bill in process since 2009 came within days of being approved in the Mexican senate in regular session last April before it was tabled for possible action in a special session this summer.

The Partido Revolucionario Institucional(PRI) dominated Comision de Gobernacion or Government Commission voted with one vote against to recommend the bill be moved to the next regular session on approval by the Senate.

The law is languishing as Senators determine whether to move the bill during a special session. According to the rules that tabled the bill, the decision must be made by August 12th.

The decision by the Chamber of Deputies streamlines approval of the bill if the Senate approves it during a special session. The vote today ensures the bill would move to a conference committee once it is approved.

Partido Trabajo (PT) federal deputy Jaime Cardenas voted against all parts of the new law while all the remaining members of the commission voted to approve all parts of the new law. Cadenas maintains the law puts the Mexican Army above all civil law, "and that is dangerous," he is quoted as saying in several Mexican news outlets.

Partido Trabajo is a Maoist/leftist political party that usually aligns itself with the more mainstream leftist Partido Revolucion Democratica (PRD). Many members of the PRD have voiced their reservations about the law throughout the debate since last fall, however, the members of the PRD on the committee voted for the law. PT's dissent means very little as PT claims less than 3 percent of the seats in the Chamber of Deputies.

Many sectors of the Mexican left have vehemently opposed the new law, including Javier Sicilia, the Mexican leftist, poet and leader of the Movement for Peace Justice and Dignity.

Sicilia's group, which has staged three pubic protests since last March, is funded by several international leftist groups including George Soros's Open Society institute, and is likely funded also though informal movements within the Mexican Catholic church. His group also receives stated support from two armed communist groups, the Ejercito Zapatista de Liberacion Nacional(EZLN) of Chiapas state and the Ej�rcito Popular Revolucionario (ERP) of Guerrero state.

Sicilia opposes the new national law and has recommended on several ocaisions that drugs be legalized. Despite that proposal, Sicilia has recommended several new laws with regard to the national security law,human and civil rights.

Sicilia, whio lost a son to a drug murder in late March, has gained no fewer than two face to face meetings with Mexican President Felipe Calderon Hinojosa, who has soundly rejected all of Sicilias recommendations.

Despite that, Sicilia and a number of human rights groups in Mexico did have a six hour meeting with a number of federal deputies and senators including the leaders of each house, in Mexico City at the Castillo de Chapultepec last Thursday.

At the conclusion ogf the meeting legislators agreed to take up several reforms including comprehensive care for victims of crime, a reparations fund, creating a truth commission and audits of police and public security systems.

At the meeting's conclusion, PRI Senator Manlio Fabio Beltrones said that no certain date has been set to deal with the new proposals.

The new national security law is very controversial as it seeks several changes in Article 29 of the Mexican Constitution.

As matters currently stand the president can declare a state of emergency with the approval of his cabinet, the Council of Ministers, and both the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate for an unspecified limited time. Nothing in Article 29 sets forth what president may or may not do.

The new national security law adds specific actions the president may do through the military forces under his command.

For example, the new law allows the military to define regions where a local commander may declare martial law, a specification not included in Article 29. The law also exempts the military from any culpability for their actions during an emergency unless intentional misconduct can be proven.

The martial law declaration part is what the Mexican left opposes the most. Many members of the PRD and PT were victims of the Dirty War from 1968 to 1982, prosecuted by a series of PRI presidents who sought to destroy left reform movements, armed and otherwise in Mexico. The idea of a return to Los Pinos of a PRI president with the new national security law in place is seemingly a fear that is now held.

But it is the military exemption that is potentially the most controversial.

Last July the Mexican Supreme Court ruled that military personnel involved in wrongdoing must be prosecuted by civil courts, essentially turning the concept of military justice on its head. 

That is because since 2005, all three branches of the Mexican defense forces, army, navy and air force have installed human rights directorates whose sole purpore is to investigate and recommend for prosecution military personal who have violated human rights of civilians during counternarcotics operations.

Since 2006, less than two percent of all human rights cases filed with SEDENA, the agency for the Mexican Army, for exmaple, have been dismissed. Some military officials have publicly characterized the other 98 percent of complaints as "jokes".

Calderon has recommended in light of the new decision to separate rape and forced disappearances as a list of offenses in which military personnel are exempt from the new ruling, however nothing has been addressed in the new law that exempts military personnel from any crimes.

Forced disappearances were the issue in the Supreme Court decision last month. In the Dirty War as many as 1,200 individuals have been listed as missing. 

At the meeting also was a group from Coahuila state which claimed as many as 120 missing since the state of the drug war in 2006.