The Mexican Senate. | Photo credit: REUTERS
Mexico’s Senate voted early Wednesday (September 11, 2024) in favor of an overhaul of the country’s judiciary, clearing the biggest hurdle for a controversial constitutional overhaul that will allow all judges to stand for election, a change that critics fear it will politicize the judiciary. ramifications and threaten Mexican democracy.
The approval came by two votes after hundreds of protesters entered the Senate on Tuesday (September 10, 2024) and interrupted the session after it emerged that Morena, the ruling party of outgoing President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, had lined up the necessary votes to pass the proposal approve.
The legislation passed the House of Representatives last week, where Morena and her allies have a supermajority. Senate approval posed the biggest obstacle and required defections from opposition parties.
One came on Tuesday from the conservative opposition National Action Party (PAN), after a lawmaker who had previously opposed the reform took a leave of absence for medical reasons and suggested his father, a former governor, vote in favor of the proposal. The lawmaker eventually returned to his seat to give the proposal the final vote it needed.
The votes in the Senate were both 86 to 41, with the second result coming around 4 a.m. The room erupted in cheers and chants of “Yes, we could!”
The legislation must now be ratified by the legislatures of at least 17 of Mexico’s 32 states. The ruling party is believed to have the necessary support after big gains in the recent elections. Oaxaca’s legislature was the first to ratify it, just hours after its approval by the Senate.
President-elect Claudia Sheinbaum, who takes office Oct. 1, congratulated lawmakers for passing the review.
The election of judges “will strengthen the administration of justice in our country,” Ms. Sheinbaum wrote on the social media platform .â€
On Tuesday evening, just hours after the ruling party appeared to have gathered the necessary votes, demonstrators entered the Senate chamber with pipes and chains. At least one person fainted.
The protesters said lawmakers were not listening to their demands.
“The judiciary will not fall,” protesters shouted, waving Mexican flags and signs opposing the overhaul. They were joined by several opposition senators as they sang in the audience. Others outside roared as news anchors announced the Senate was taking a break.
Among them was Alejandro Navarrete, a 30-year-old judicial officer, who said that people like him who work in the courts “knowing the danger the reform brings” came to call on the Senate to reject the proposal.
“They have decided to sell out the nation and sell themselves for the political capital that was offered to them. We felt obliged to enter the Senate, he said, carrying a Mexican flag. “Our intention is not violent, our intention was not to hurt them, but we want to make it clear that the Mexican people will not allow them to lead us to a dictatorship.”
But a short time later, the Senate reconvened at a different location and resumed debate on the proposal. A first vote in favor came shortly after midnight.
The approval came after weeks of protests from judicial staff and law students.
Critics and observers say the plan, which would see all judges elected, could jeopardize judicial independence and undermine the system of checks and balances.
López Obrador, a populist long opposed to independent regulators who has ignored courts and attacked judges, says the plan would tackle corruption by making it easier to punish judges. Critics say this would hamper the judiciary, stack the courts with judges who favor the president’s party, allow anyone with a law degree to become a judge, and even make it easier for politicians and criminals to overrun the courts. to influence.
It has spooked investors and prompted U.S. Ambassador Ken Salazar to call it a “risk” to democracy and an economic threat.
Published – Sep 11, 2024 9:08 PM IST
