PRESIDENTIAL LIABILITY IN MEXICO. A CURRENT DEBATE

Abstract

There is a current debate in Mexico regarding the presidential liability. In the XIX and XX centuries, the president of the Republic has concentrated the power without any counterpart. In fact, the responsibility of the chief executive has been an ambiguous, complex and impossible to comply constitutionally: from their immunity, the president is unpunished. Since the independence of Mexico (1810) to the revolutionary era (1910) and constitutional one (1917), the presidential power has not assumed any responsibility for their arbitrary acts. In the current presidential government (2018-2024), however, some ideas have arisen to establish two constitutional figures to ensure the presidential accountability: on the one hand, the withdrawal of their mandate through a popular consultation; on the other hand, to enable their prosecution for any crime without requiring any parliamentary control until the issue of a condemnatory sentence. In this article, challenges are described in order to discuss the aforementioned constitutional reforms