Sheinbaum ends 1st month by “changing the rules of the political game”

President Claudia Sheinbaum at her daily press conference in Mexico City. Image credit: ZUMA Press Inc / Alamy

Morena and its allies have passed a constitutional amendment that blocks court oversight of both past and future amendments. A majority of states had ratified the measure by the end of Thursday, and President Sheinbaum signed it into law.

The ruling coalition calls it the “Constitutional Supremacy” bill. But, really, it’s a Morena Supremacy bill. By changing Articles 105 and 107 of the Mexican constitution, it strips the judiciary of any power to challenge amendments passed by Congress—even retroactively. The immediate intent for the ruling coalition is to render a pending Supreme Court review on judicial reform dead in the water.

The measure shot through 23 state legislatures—a clear majority—within 24 hours of passing the Chamber of Deputies. Debate in the Chamber was fast: only 10 hours, with accusations of “ghost votes” tipping the scale in Morena’s favour. In one example, a Morena Deputy in New York at the time was shown to have voted “yes.”

Opposition Deputy Juan Zavala, from the Movimiento Ciudadano party, points to other troubling issues with how this reform got passed. “Many states voted less than two hours after it was approved by the Chamber of Deputies; others by Zoom, some others without even discussion,” Zavala says. When asked what this rushed, legally suspect process says about Morena, he adds, “It shows the speed with which they want to take over the Judiciary, nothing more.”

This is a bleak turn for Mexico’s democracy. Speaking to The Mexico Brief, Javier Martín Reyes, a constitutional scholar at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), says “this is a profoundly retrograde reform of human rights.” With the executive and the legislative majority fully aligned, if the reform stands Mexico’s constitutional checks and balances are more or less history. Reyes points out “[The reform’s] constitutionality is not set in stone and could be challenged, opening the door for another crucial constitutional review.” A Supreme Court challenge is almost a given. But Morena has made clear its intentions. Those intentions throw into doubt whether the governing coalition would respect the outcome of any such review.

Francisca Pou, a senior researcher at UNAM’s Institute for Legal Research and a specialist in constitutional change, explains the gravity. “The amendment not only allows, but positively incentivizes, the inclusion of any sort of imaginable content in the Constitution, no matter how crazy—since people willing to so do will confidently act under the assumption that there will be no possible reaction against it at the national level.” In other words, for example, if Sheinbaum and her congressional allies decide to extend a presidential term to 12 years instead of six, there’s now nothing to stop them.

This latest move caps off a spree of constitutional amendments Morena has pushed through over the last two months. Constitutional reform isn’t new in Mexico. But the sheer volume of amendments to enact Morena’s agenda is unprecedented. What’s also new is the lack of cross-party negotiation. In previous times of big constitutional change, buy-in was sought from all major parties. Not this time. Morena’s minor allies—the Worker’s Party and the Green Party—are its only support. The PAN, MC, and PRI have been shut out entirely.

Pou warns that this “Constitutional Supremacy” reform is much more than a tweak. “It operates an alteration in the constitutional system that looks far beyond a mere reform of the system: it changes the rules of the political game,” she says. Combined with other changes to regulators, the National Guard, and earlier judicial reforms, the result, Pou explains, is a “cumulative effect on the constitutional system that lacks any precedent.”

Sheinbaum has been in office for just a month. Far from moderating her predecessor’s polarising agenda, she’s ramping it up. Instead of uniting Mexico around solutions to its challenges, she’s leading the country deeper into a constitutional crisis. If this is month one, buckle up for the next six years.

Editor’s Note: This piece was amended on 3 November to include quotes from Javier Martín Reyes.