It will be subject to change: Ricardo Monreal said that the lithium reform will be reviewed

Ricardo Monreal, Morena's coordinator in the Senate of the Republic, assured that the Reform to the Mining Law (LM) that seeks to guarantee the sovereignty of the Mexican State over lithium will be thoroughly reviewed by the federal legislature, this in accordance with the widespread assumption that the president's order is not to change not a comma to the draft decree.

On the afternoon of this Monday, April 18, the activist of the National Regeneration Movement (Morena) convened a press conference, in which he was subjected to different questions regarding the political situation in the legislature resulting from two events that captured the political and media perspective with great force.

First, the president of the Political Coordination Board (Jucopo) was questioned about the result that was obtained in the Chamber of Deputies in relation to the dismissal of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) of the Electric Reform, to which he said that this is the case in democracies “sometimes it is won, sometimes it is loses”.

He also refrained from condemning opposition benches as “traitors to the homeland”. Instead, he merely said that they promote nation projects that do not match the vision of Q4, but that the people of Mexico will realize which project suits them and, for that reason, the votes of the next ones will be defined electoral processes.

With regard to the reform of the LM and what it represents in the work of the State in the face of lithium, Monreal Ávila noted that this initiative “aims to guarantee the nation's self-determination as well as the people's energy sovereignty over lithium and some other minerals that are strategic and necessary for the transition energy, technological innovation and national development”.

He also said that the Morena bench in the Senate agrees with the initiative promoting the creation of “a decentralized public body responsible for the exploration, exploitation, industrialization and the integral use of this mineral.”

Regarding this approach, he said, is that the nation must take charge of such an important natural resource, because with a statesman's vision, it is assumed that the benefits of this mineral will be beneficial to the people. In this regard, the doctor of constitutional law from UNAM said that the process to ratify this initiative will be thoroughly.

To clarify doubts about the procedure, the senator specified that they will wait until the Chamber of Deputies concludes its work with the initiative: they rule, approve and submit the minutes. As a result, senators will begin their normal work “as we have been doing in recent times in passing laws.”

Finally, it should be noted that the Chamber of Deputies, with a vote of 298 demonstrations in favor, 197 abstentions and zero against, approved the LM Reform with some modifications to the reserved articles, so it will generate the final draft to send the minutes to the Upper House and that the latter, in accordance with the rule of law, ratifies that lithium will remain in the exclusive hands of the nation.

It is important to point out that during the parliamentary discussion, the benches that make up the Va por México coalition (PRI, PAN and PRD) left the legislative precinct and, in an act of protest, indicated that they will only vote in abstention, something that was deeply criticized by Gerardo Fernández Noroña, since he reminded them that in there are no gaps.

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