Morena’s judicial reform win is a Pyrrhic victory

Protesters breach the Mexican Senate plenary and halt proceedings. 10 Sep 2024. Image credit: Luis Cortes, Reuters.

Early this morning, President López Obrador’s Morena party forced through its controversial judicial reform. The reform’s passage came hours after protesters stormed the Senate, halting proceedings.

This marks the collapse of any real separation of powers in Mexico.  It heralds the rise of an unaccountable, quasi-autocratic regime. Across two rounds, Mexico's judges will all be fired. They will be replaced via convoluted elections, involving thousands of candidates dominated by Morena loyalists. A supervising body will have unchecked power to remove judges once elected.

Short of one vote to secure the necessary supermajority, Morena’s coalition was prepared to rely on the deciding vote of Veracruz politician Miguel Àngel Yunes Linares. According to El Universal, Yunes Linares has previously faced accusations of torture. The non-profit Justice in Mexico has detailed accusations against Yunes Linares of illicit money transfers. Mexican journalist Lydia Cacho has also accused him of taking part in a child trafficking ring, which he has denied. And he isn’t even a Senator. He was welcomed into the chamber to stand-in for his son, PAN Senator Miguel Àngel Yunes Márquez. Yunes Márquez, also subject to a criminal investigation, had earlier reported himself too ill to vote. In the end, he showed up and gave Morena his support.

The opposition also faced brazen intimidation. Senator Daniel Barreda, who publicly opposed the reform, found out his father was detained in Campeche, a state governed by Morena, just hours before the vote.

President-elect Sheinbaum supports the reform. She faces a bitter aftermath. This reform, pushed through with gangster-like tactics, could unravel her presidency. Her party’s open embrace of Yunes Linares undermines Sheinbaum’s feminist credentials. It exposes the hollowness of her leftist rhetoric. More important, though, is the economic fallout. New investment into Mexico is down 80% from last year, and the peso has lost 15% of its value since June. The message is clear. International markets are wary of the reform and its implications for rule of law in Mexico.

Morena's supporters are drawing parallels between Tuesday’s protests and the January 6 insurrection. This is as cynical as it is misleading. This publication doesn’t support intimidating lawmakers. Protesters should not have breached the Senate assembly. Nevertheless, Tuesday’s protests were a desperate attempt to stop a constitutional coup, lacking in democratic legitimacy, and aimed at subjugating the judiciary to political power. January 6 was a violent insurrection, with the explicit aim to foment chaos. Participants in January 6 called for the murder of senior politicians. The aim was to subvert a legitimate democratic election. The two events are not comparable.

Sheinbaum knows this is not the end of the story. Mexico has begun a slow, painful drift out of the North American club of democracies. It will find itself missing many of the benefits that flow from that club. Sheinbaum will find herself picking up the pieces from the vote’s fallout for a long time to come. She may find they don't fit together again.