Rescue of Mine Workers/More Pending Reforms

Rescue of mine workers. Minister of National Defense Luis Cresencio Sandoval announced that this Friday the authorities are expected to have the necessary water levels for rescuers to enter the collapsed mine in Coahuila. Currently, well one is 1.7m deep, well two is 2.9m deep and well three is 4.7m deep. “A 150-horsepower pump was introduced to run overnight. We had good results and we hope that today we will have the necessary levels for the rescue to start”.

On August 3, 15 miners were working at a depth of 60m in the coal mine located in Sabinas, Coahuila, when the walls of the tunnels collapsed, flooding the three pits. For a week, authorities have been draining the water to enter the mine and rescue the miners, whose health status remains unknown. At the time of the accident, five of the 15 mine workers managed to escape. Currently, the relatives of the victims have complained about the lack of transparency and progress of the authorities. Velázquez stressed that the rescue efforts have continued non-stop for the past 207 hours and that the trapped miners are expected to be rescued today.

New Reform. President Andrés Manuel López Obrador assured that his new reform, which seeks for the National Guard to fully depend on the Ministry of Defense (SEDENA), will be presented by legal means. “A constitutional reform is the ideal, but we have to find a way because they are blocking us. We are going to find a way to make reforms that are not constitutional so we do not depend on our opponents. But always by legal means."

This week, President López Obrador said his new reform has the objective of restructuring the Secretary of Security and Citizen Protection (SSPC). With this change, the SSPC will no longer have operative activities in the field of public security and its mission will be to prevent crime and coordinate actions to avoid torture. Moreover, the agreement proposed by the president seeks that the National Guard depend on SEDENA.

AMLO's political agenda. President López Obrador stressed that in addition to SEDENA’s reform, the electoral reform, the elimination of summer time and water concessions are pending. “There is opposition but we are going to continue insisting. There are several pending reforms, especially the electoral one.”

The new electoral reform proposes changing 18 articles and inserting 7 transitional ones, seeking to replace the National Electoral Institute (INE), eliminate plurinominal deputies, reduce the number of federal legislators to 300 deputies and 96 senators, while implementing electronic voting, among other changes. Since López Obrador took office in 2018, he has insisted on the need for terminating corruption at INE and the Electoral Tribunal of the Judicial Power of the Federation (TEPJF) to transform them into true autonomous and democratic institutions. The president said that since the current electoral bodies have failed in their democratic duties, he sent a proposal to Congress to change its members and configuration.

For the past few months, Mexican legislators have been discussing the elimination of the daylight saving time (DST) practice. The proposition has been backed mostly by MORENA, under the argument that the change affects people’s sleep and health. López Obrador recently said that it is likely that his government will remove DST because “the savings are minimal and the damage to health is considerable.”

Due to the water crisis affecting Mexico´s northern states, López Obrador reassured that basic water consumption will be guaranteed by organizing concessions and stop emitting permits to companies for the exploitation of water. In Mexico there are 520,000 permits of public and private entities to exploit water, according to the Public Registry of Water Rights of CONAGUA. The president said his government is analyzing the possibility of reforming the National Water Law to eliminate concessions.