Passing Laws In a Hurry

Mauricio Merino on the flurried finish to the most recent legislative term:

Behind closed doors and in the middle of the health crisis through which Mexico passed, the 60th Legislature decided to approve a long list of constitutional and legal reforms, before closing its final period of sessions. Being on an obligatory vacation, the data from Information Service for the Parliamentary Statistics of the Congress of the Nation ends on precisely April 23rd and, for that reason, we still can't compare with certainty the magnitude of the change approved nor, even less, evaluate their social impact. But we do know that the legislators wanted to approve many laws before heading home.

Thinking in good faith, it could be said that the members of the legislature that will conclude next August wanted to move forward many reforms, so that the statistics of the congress (when they are updated) reveal that it was a very productive legislature. Which is to say, one that modified the Constitution many times and changed many laws. That's what many members of our legislature are talking about, very proudly: their ability to reform many things at the same time, in a sort of feverish competition between parliamentary factions.

Nevertheless, almost nobody knows to what criteria the reforms of this legislative waterfall responded, what new rights and obligations our legislators invented to justify their salaries, who was favored or disfavored with these reforms, nor for what reasons that passed them. There wasn't time to explain any of this, not even among the legislators themselves. It was about legislating a lot and very quickly, one group approving another's projects and minutiae, and not about giving missing explanations.