At 11:24 am this Thursday began in the full of the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation (SCJN) the in-depth study among the ministers to determine whether or not the reforms to the Electricity Industry Law (LIE) promoted by the president Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador to privilege the Federal electricity commission (CFE) in energy dispatch.
The minister’s project Loretta Ortiz proposes to declare the validity of the decree by which various provisions of the Electricity Industry Lawpublished in the Official Journal of the Federation of March 9, 2021.
However, in last Tuesday’s session, this project was rejected by a majority vote regarding the considerations section, which was voted on by five votes in favor and six against.
Minister of the Supreme Court, Arturo Zaldivar Lelo de Larreaannounced that this Thursday’s session will not be adjourned until the matter is fully resolved.
The opposition senators who promoted an unconstitutional action argued that the reforms to articles 4, section VI, 26, 53, 101 and 108, section VI, amended from the Law of the Electricity Industry, are violators of USMCA (Treaty between Mexico, the United States and Canada) and of TIPAT (Treaty between Mexico, Japan, Canada, Singapore, Australia, New Zealand, Vietnam and Peru), as well as article 133 of the Constitution.
However, Minister Ortiz’s project considers that “the new figure does not contravene the TIPAT or the T-MEC, since in the chapters called Investment of each treaty, it is possible to highlight that the physical delivery scheme is currently implemented at the international level. of energy”.
On the possibility that the reforms to the LEL allow a monopolistic practice on the part of CFEwhich threatens free competition and concurrence by granting undue advantages prohibited by article 28 of the Constitution, as the opposition senators assured, Minister Ortiz proposes that “an exclusive advantage is not granted in law or an advantage in fact (…) since, the commitment of physical delivery of energy is not something that can be fulfilled exclusively by the Federal electricity commissionany company can assume this commitment”.
Last Wednesday, the Secretary of the Interior, Adam Augusto Lopez, went to the headquarters of the Supreme Court, although he did not report the reason for his visit, or with whom he met. The visit took place two hours after the president López Obrador charged that the government of United States was lobbying for the Court to declare the reforms to the LIE invalid.
This discussion in the Court is also framed by the statements made on Wednesday by President López Obrador, who considered that the ministers will demonstrate whether they are lawyers who “defend the public interest or the interests of the employers.”
“It is unfortunate that the ministers of the Court, I don’t know if all of them, most of them, are like employer lawyers, to put it clearly; they do not represent the people, they represent the companies, that is how they were formed, that is how they were chosen during the neoliberal period, that is their conception, their mentality”, he declared.
“Here it is to define if the electrical law that establishes that treatment must be given, if not preferential, equal to the Federal electricity commissionthat the treatment received by private companies, because the reform they carried out, that they carried out, acted corruptly in every sense, because that constitutional reform, that legal system that is in force, considered among other things that hydroelectric plants do not produce, they do not generate clean energy and that is why they were not made a priority for the dispatch and all the hydroelectric plants, 60 hydroelectric of the country are underutilized or stopped because they are not allowed to increase the energy they produce,” he said.
