Since México’s President Enrique Peña Nieto first proposed opening the country’s oil and gas sector to investors, the leftist Democratic Revolution Party (PRD) has fought the idea, arguing that the government would be giving away its natural resources.
Former presidential candidate Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) worked tirelessly in opposition of Peña Nieto’s Energy Reform. In addition to calling for civil disobedience, he began soliciting signatures calling for a referendum on the president’s energy reform.
“I don’t know why they (Senators) are so scared to ask Mexicans whether or not they want to privatize the national energy sector. We’re not even going to present it that way as a question,” López Obrador said. “We’re going to ask them whether or not they want to give petroleum contracts or concessions to foreign or national private companies and it will be the people who decide.”
In December of last year Jesús Zambrano, President of the PRD, presented the Mexican Senate with a petition signed by more than 2 million people who oppose the president’s proposed Energy Reform. This was enough signatures to force a binding referendum on the energy reform.
After receiving the petition Congress asked the Supreme Court to rule on the constitutionality of the referendum demanding a vote on the controversial overhaul of the energy sector.
Yesterday in a 9-1 decision the Supreme Court ruled the plebiscite would be unconstitutional because the outcome could have an impact on government revenues or expenditures. Justice Olga Sanchez Cordero, whose brief formed the basis for the decision, wrote that Article 35, the constitutional amendment creating the mechanism of a referendum, expressly excludes topics with a bearing on government finances.
Sen. Dolores Padierna of the PRD criticized the ruling, saying the issue at stake is not government income but rather “our natural resources … (and) their use for the nation’s benefit.”
(from Latin American Herald Tribune)
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