How to create a Constitution for Mexico City without make it useless?

In México, the Federal District, no longer exist, officially since January 29th this year, its name is “Ciudad de México” México City, an additional state of the country. Therefore, there will be some changes largely expected for the local government, for example, the ministry of public security will no longer have to be approved by the President, as well as the attorney general of the city; additionally the city will have access to other budgetary pockets of the national income. On the other hand, the citizens will have to expend more money on hiring more government employees, because the “delegaciones” now will be municipalities and such change will mean that they should have their own council.

Of course people is not very enthusiastic about it, there is a feeling that there was not a need for a local constitution. As a prove of that is that, in the election there were only 28% of potential voters the ones that chose the Constituent Assembly.

Now we will see a new chapter in the battle for Mexico City, how to create a constitution that reflects better the interests of each party? It is not for the wellbeing of the citizens, is for the image that the new constitution will project for all the country. Everyone is conscious of that, the political integration of the assembly does not mean more budget, the positions are nonpaid, so there was not particular interest for people to try to win, that’s also another reason of the low participation of voters.

During campaigns was usual to hear about particular minority groups trying to be taken into account by their proposals for the constitution; women’s, homosexuals, young people, indigenous people, etc. Of course they have the right to push for their particular agenda. But, in for the writing of the constitution, parties will try to explicitly express each of one of those rights, without care if there is the possibility of establishing more general principles. That’s their point; parties have the opportunity to speak to their own “clients”.

For example, we can expect to see many references to the right to work, “Article X. young people has the right to work…”, “Article XI. indigenous people has the right to work..”, “Article XII. women has the right to work..” and so on.

 Since that perspective, we will end with a local constitution similar to the ones in Venezuela with 350 articles and Ecuador with 444 articles, making the process useless and the hole process just a political waste of time and money.