Oral Trials

El Universal wonders what happened to that oh-so-important part of last year's judicial reform:

Let's remember that in 2008 legislators reformed ten articles of the Constitution with the objective of installing oral trials in Mexico, guarantees of the presumption of innocence, an effective public defender, specific centers for preventive prison and special judges for issues of organized crime, among others.

One year later there's only good intentions. So yesterday the political interest in the theme was measured. To whom can we attribute the irresponsibility? Yesterday, in the Forum on National Security with Justice, organized by the Citizen Network for Oral Trials, where Alejandro Martí is among the many other promoters, the parties were invited to explain themselves in regard to this delay.

The secretary general of the PRI, in the voice of Jesús Murillo Karam, and the presidency of the PRD, under the control of Jesús Ortega, charged the federal executive of being behind the delay. Representing the PAN, César Nava, candidate for deputy and ex-personal secretary of President Felipe Calderón, responded to the criticisms with explanations about the technical difficulty of the reform.

There is no doubt, today the Mexican political class understands crisis as the moment in which you must toss all the blame on whomever is in front of you.

In related news, Michelle Bachelet, who's in Mexico and whose nation went from written to oral trials in the 1990s, is also a believer in oral trials.