Protestors stormed the Mexican Senate Chambers in Mexico City on Sept. 10 as President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador secured the supermajority needed to pass the constitutional reforms to overhaul the judiciary.  

Leaders of Mexico’s left-wing incumbent party, Morena, urged the Mexican people to help the party secure a large majority in both chambers of Congress. President-elect Claudia Sheinbaum’s landslide victory in Mexico’s General Election on June 2, 2024, positioned Morena only two votes shy of the supermajority needed in the Senate. 

Obrador sought to amend the Constitution in an effort to counteract the Supreme Court’s blocking of parts of his agenda, specifically his attempt to dismantle the “Instituto Nacional Electoral” (INE), Mexico’s independent commission that oversees elections.

Now that Obrador’s judicial overhaul has passed its tallest hurdle, the 11 justices in the Supreme Court, in addition to all circuit court, federal district, and state judges, will be forced to campaign for election as soon as next year. Obrador is set to end his six-year term with his most consequential move yet. The judicial overhaul is only half of his final agenda; the next step is to reshape the electoral system by dismantling the INE.

While Morena supporters celebrate this victory for a progressive agenda, the opposition and political scholars warn that these reforms will erode Mexican democratic institutions and weaken checks on Morena’s growing power. These changes have also sparked widespread outrage, expressed by Mexico’s judges and thousands of court workers who started a strike on August 19 to protest Obrador’s proposed reform.

Dismantling the Election Watchdog

Half a million Mexicans took to the streets outside the National Palace in Mexico City in late February 2023 to protest President Obrador’s attempt to dismantle the INE. Obrador and Morena passed a bill in the Senate that would significantly change the independent election commission poised to oversee the presidential election a year later. As citizens gathered in streets across the country, they chanted, “The INE will not be touched.”

Obrador’s attempt to reform the electoral process is controversial as it would significantly restructure the composition of the institution by reducing its funds and number of employees, closing various local offices nationwide. The INE reported that these reforms would lead to an 84.6% reduction in the institution’s size. An analysis conducted by the INE found that these changes could jeopardize processes tied to the election and electoral campaigns, which are crucial for maintaining a healthy democracy.

Obrador and his allies justify these changes to the INE as a way to eliminate unnecessary spending, accounting for 271 million dollars in only one year. These reforms seek to lower the high salaries of the organization’s top executives and to avoid having two bodies of government conducting overlapping functions. Rather than waste money, Obrador seeks to appropriate it towards social programs and scholarships.

While the INE has its faults, as does almost every governmental institution in Mexico, the establishment of this autonomous institution played a pivotal role in ending the one-party rule that dominated Mexico up to its first free election in 2000. Although there are legitimate claims of corruption in many cases, the INE has enabled Mexico to hold free elections—with three different political parties winning the presidency in the past five elections. Former Supreme Court magistrate, Ramón Cossío, who participated in the protest, accused Obrador of “appropriating the electoral system” at a crucial time in the nation’s history. With Morena dominating Mexican politics in the past three election cycles, these reforms threaten a return to a one-party system, with nearly no checks on that party’s power. Obrador targeted the court system because it was the last threat to the Morena agenda.

The Fight for an Independent Judiciary

One check remained that brought Morena’s electoral overhaul to a stop: the Supreme Court. The Court halted Obrador’s reforms because they claimed it violated Mexican citizens’ political and electoral rights. In response, Obrador declared that the Supreme Court is “part of the mafia of power” of the “old regime” where the conservative parties controlled the country’s institutions. He claimed that the Court is just like the conservatives, “part of the oligarchy, not wanting a government of the people.”

While this win for the INE bought Obrador’s opposition time, he and his allies plotted a new route forward. To dismantle the INE, Morena reformed the Supreme Court to eliminate the last check on the executive’s power. Hundreds of courtrooms and tribunals are beginning to close after nearly 55,000 magistrates, court workers, and judges walked out in protest when Obrador announced his plans in August. Despite the boycott, Obrador secured the two outstanding votes needed and successfully passed the legislation on Sept. 11.

Every judge, who has dedicated their life to the judicial institution, will now have to campaign for their seat at the bench. Their decades on the bench will no longer matter, with the only requirement to become a judge being to have an accredited law degree. Morena will place loyal judicial candidates on the ballot in a restructured electoral system in which the party has increased control of the election.

While Obrador claims his efforts would eliminate “corruption and privileges,” this overhaul would directly absorb the courts into the political arena. With explicit partisanship in the judicial process, judges will be pressured to act as legislators on the bench rather than an independent check on executive power. Emilio Polo Anaya wrote in an article for the Wilson Center, the nonpartisan council that advises U.S. Congress, about his concern that Morena’s is attempting to “dominate all three branches of government by trying to eliminate the independence of one of the few remaining autonomous powers.”

Concerns over Democratic Backsliding

Constitutional reforms aimed at restructuring elections and the judicial system have raised concerns from Morena’s opposition and the international community. The Congressional Research Service reported that Morena’s large majority in Congress “raises the possibility of democratic backsliding in Mexico.” In addition to harming the health of Mexican democracy, the service warns that “investors have expressed concern that these dynamics could hinder Mexico’s investment climate.” In response to skepticism from the Canadian and American embassies, Obrador temporarily paused relations with US and Canadian ambassadors in Mexico City. His final moves as president has been the most significant turnoff toward the possibility of discrediting Mexican institutions.

Now that Morena successfully pushed the first step of this agenda, institutions that preserve Mexico’s young democracy will suffer. Obrador will pass down the torch to Sheinbaum, who championed this new development in the Senate shows how “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.”

In response to critics’ concern over the threat to the health of Mexican democracy, Obrador states, “What is more democratic than the election of ministers of the court or of an election that was proposed at the moment for advisors of the INE? What is more democratic?” The question Obrador and Sheinbaum fail to consider is how these reforms threaten to recall Mexico back to the single-party system that activists and leaders like themselves helped dismantle more than two decades ago.