MEXICO CITY – Mexico’s Senate voted early Wednesday to overhaul the country’s judiciary, clearing the biggest hurdle for a controversial constitutional revision that will make all judges stand for election, a change that critics fear will politicize the judicial branch and threaten Mexico’s democracy.
The approval came in two votes after hundreds of protesters pushed their way into the Senate on Tuesday, interrupting the session after it appeared that Morena, the ruling party of outgoing President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, had lined up the necessary votes to pass the proposal.
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Judicial employees and law students had protested for weeks, saying the plan, under which all judges would be elected, could threaten judicial independence and undermine the system of checks and balances.
The legislation sailed through the lower chamber, where Morena and its allies hold a supermajority, last week. Approval by the Senate posed the biggest obstacle and required defections from opposition parties.
One came Tuesday from the conservative opposition National Action Party (PAN) after a lawmaker who had previously spoken out against the overhaul flipped to vote for alongside the ruling party. On Wednesday, he was thrown out of PAN.
Both of the Senate votes were 86-41. The chamber erupted into 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 governing party is believed to have the necessary support after major gains in recent elections. Oaxaca's legislature became the first to ratify it just hours after the Senate's approval.
López Obrador, a populist long averse to independent regulatory bodies who has ignored courts and attacked judges, says the plan would crack down on corruption by making it easier to punish judges. Critics say it would handicap the judiciary, stack courts with judges favoring the president’s party, allow anyone with a law degree to become a judge and even make it easier for politicians and criminals to influence courts.
It has spooked investors and prompted U.S. Ambassador Ken Salazar to call it a “risk” to democracy and an economic threat, after which López Obrador said relations with the U.S. Embassy were put "on pause."
Experts said the overhaul is almost set in stone, and that it would be very difficult for courts or any other body to stop it from moving forward.
The plan could be challenged in the Inter-American Court of Human Rights because it may violate international treaties where Mexico commits to having an independent and impartial judiciary. But the process would be slow and likely receive a backlash, said Georgina de la Fuente, an academic member of the Observatory of Political Reforms in Latin America.
“Any order coming from abroad will be manipulated in the public discourse as interference or violation of national sovereignty,” she said.
That same argument of violating international treaties could be taken to Mexico's Supreme Court, said Laurence Patin, director of the Mexican legal NGO Foundation for Justice, but said it would be complicated to annul a constitutional reform with that argument. Another possibility would be to appeal to irregularities in the process if the changes are confirmed.
President-elect Claudia Sheinbaum, who takes office Oct. 1, congratulated lawmakers on passing the overhaul.
The election of judges “will strengthen the delivery of justice in our country,” Sheinbaum wrote on the social media platform X. “The regime of corruption and privileges each day is being left farther in the past and a true democracy and true rule of law are being built.”
López Obrador acknowledged Wednesday that many are against the plan, but said “it's incredibly important to put an end to corruption and impunity. “We're going to make a lot of progress when the people can freely elect judges, magistrates and ministers,” he said.
Some experts and observers, however, have suggested that the overhaul could have the opposite effect, and allow corrupt individuals and criminals to have more sway over the justice system.
On Tuesday evening, just hours after the governing party appeared to have wrangled the votes it needed, protesters with pipes and chains broke into the Senate chamber. At least one person fainted.
The protesters said lawmakers were not listening to their demands.
“The judiciary isn’t going to fall,” yelled the protesters, waving Mexican flags and signs opposing the overhaul. They were joined by a number of opposition senators as they chanted in the chamber. Others outside roared when newscasters announced the Senate was taking a recess.
Among them was Alejandro Navarrete, a 30-year-old judicial worker, who said he and his colleagues “knowing the danger the reform represents” came to call on the Senate to strike down the proposal.
“They have decided to sell out the nation and sell out for political capital they were offered. We felt obligated to enter the Senate,” he said, carrying a Mexican flag. “Our intention is not violent, we didn’t intend to hurt them, but we intend to make it clear that the Mexican people won’t allow them to lead us into a dictatorship.”
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AP writer María Verza and video journalist Martín Silva Rey in Mexico City contributed to this report.