Mexico passes judicial reform cementing Morena party’s power

Mexico’s Senate approved the text of President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador’s plan to overhaul the country’s judicial system, bringing his party closer to controlling the only branch of government that eluded the outgoing leader during his six-year term.

The constitutional reform proposal, whose core goal is to select the Supreme Court and all federal judges by popular election, was approved early Wednesday in a 86-41 vote. After a discussion of individual articles, the full text was approved around 4 a.m. with no changes to the bill.

Since the reform changes the constitution, it required a two-thirds majority in both houses of Congress to be approved. After comfortably passing the proposal last week in the lower house, the ruling Morena party and its allies were just one vote shy of reaching the supermajority required to also approve it in the Senate.

The decisive vote came from opposition senator Miguel Angel Yunes Marquez, of the PAN party, who switched sides Tuesday to vote in favor of the proposal. He said that after evaluating the plan, which critics say will undermine democracy by eliminating checks and balances, he decided to support it.

“In the most difficult decision of my life, I have decided to vote in favor of the bill to create a new model for the administration of justice,” he said late Tuesday during the debate of the reform proposal in the Senate.

The plan must now receive the backing of state legislatures – most of them controlled by Morena.

Lopez Obrador’s proposal seeks to elect approximately half of Mexico’s federal judges by popular vote in 2025, including all Supreme Court justices. The other half would be replaced in 2027, when electoral court judges are expected to be elected.

Evening clashes

The debate was marred by clashes. Tuesday afternoon, senators had to change the location of the discussion after hundreds of protesters opposed to the plan entered the main floor of the chamber. The demonstrators, including judiciary workers, yelled: “The judiciary will not fall.”

After debate resumed in a different venue, demonstrators confronted police, seeking to enter the new location, the former Senate building in the downtown of Mexico City. Police sought to disperse the demonstrators with tear gas, Radio Formula reported.

The peso reversed losses after weakening as much as 0.2% against the US dollar on the back of the vote’s outcome. The reform’s approval had been largely anticipated by most traders.

The currency is down almost 15% since the unexpected landslide congressional win by Lopez Obrador’s party in June, becoming the worst performer in a basket of major currencies. The result – along with the unwinding of carry trades in global FX markets – knocked the peso from its two-year run among the best performing major currencies in the world.

Defecting vote

Earlier Tuesday, Yunes Marquez requested a leave of absence for health reasons, missing the debate in which the reform was presented in the Senate. In the afternoon he joined the session to express his support for the bill.

Senators of the PAN party said that since Monday he was unreachable, suspecting that the ruling coalition was pressuring him to support the plan. Political columnists had reported that party officials offered to eliminate investigations against his family on alleged corruption cases in exchange for his vote in favor of the reform.

Controversial plan

Lopez Obrador’s controversial proposal, whose opponents say will end the independence of the judiciary since the newly elected judges will respond to political interests, would also reduce the number of Supreme Court justices to 9 from 11 and cut their term to 12 from 15 years. He also seeks to eliminate the requirement that judges must be at least 35 years old, and halve the years of experience needed in judiciary work to 5 from 10.

“The damage that this reform will mean for the country is incalculable,” said opposition Senator Luis Donaldo Colosio Riojas, from the Movimiento Ciudadano party, during the debate. “Mexico is tired of demagogy, Mexico demands democracy, a reform is necessary, but not out of a need for revenge.”

The plan is a priority for AMLO, who has characterized it as a way to root out judicial corruption and wants to secure its approval before he leaves office at the end of September. But it has drawn backlash from judges, who are holding a strike against it, the Mexican opposition, investors and the US, who all say it will give the ruling party control of the judiciary, eliminating checks and balances.

President-elect Claudia Sheinbaum, who will inherit the project when she takes office on Oct. 1, has supported the reform and dismissed criticism against it, saying Monday that “domestic and foreign investors should know that their investments will be well protected in Mexico and that this reform to the judiciary strengthens democracy and justice.”

—With assistance from Maya Averbuch, Cyntia Barrera Diaz, Valentine Hilaire and Vinícius Andrade.

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