- Mexico’s judicial workers strike over AMLO’s proposed reforms
- Lopez Obrador pushes controversial plan to elect judges via public vote
- Critics fear reforms will undermine judicial independence
Thousands of judicial workers and judges have gone on strike in Mexico this week as President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, or AMLO, wants to push through a sweeping revamp of the country’s courts.
The proposed reforms revolve around a contentious proposal to elect federal judges, including Supreme Court appointments and electoral magistrates, through public voting. Lopez Obrador has stated that the reform is necessary to eliminate corruption.
However, critics regard the action as the latest salvo in the continuing conflict between Lopez Obrador and the court.
Experts such as Julio Rios Figueroa, a law professor at the Instituto Tecnologico Autonomo de Mexico (ITAM) in Mexico City, fear that the revisions might undermine the government’s checks and balances, as well as unsettling the court system.
It will cause administrative chaos and uncertainty in many areas.” It will also abolish judicial independence and autonomy in Mexico.
He also warned that the amendments could give Lopez Obrador’s Morena party disproportionate power over the legal system.
Following its victory in the June 2 general elections, the Morena party has led a significant effort to pass constitutional revisions before Lopez Obrador’s mandate expires at the end of September.
He will be succeeded by president-elect Claudia Sheinbaum, a Morena official who received the most votes in Mexican history. The concentration of power inside the Morena party has some observers concerned about the judiciary’s continued independence.
“Electoral democracy is at stake in Mexico,” Rios Figueroa declared.
Who is striking?
The strike was first announced on Monday. Unions representing approximately 55,000 judicial officials expressed worry that the measures will damage merit-based court positions.
On Wednesday, Mexico’s federal judges and magistrates group, which represents over 1,400 judicial personnel, joined the strike. The association’s leader, Juana Fuentes, warned against the reform’s broad powers for Lopez Obrador and the Morena party.
“If this bill passes, we will be creating a regime of absolute power concentrated in one single person,” Fuentes told The New York Times earlier this week.
The strike comes only days after members from the ruling Morena coalition presented a reform plan to Mexico’s lower chamber of legislature. The party secured a supermajority in that chamber in June but fell short of a supermajority in the country’s senate.
What’s in the most recent proposal?
According to the plan, judicial candidates would be chosen by the executive, legislative, and judicial arms of government. They would then be scrutinised by special committees formed by each branch to ensure they meet the qualifications to serve. Finally, the nominees would face a popular vote.
Speaking at a news conference last week, prominent Morena congressman Ignacio Mier stated that various adjustments had been made to an earlier version of the measure to address complaints.
The plan calls for staggered elections, with half of the judges—including Supreme Court members—elected in 2025 and the other half in 2027.
“This guarantees legal certainty and a justice system that ensures the people of Mexico have access to justice,” Mier told reporters, according to Bloomberg.
Why is Lopez Obrador promoting this overhaul?
Lopez Obrador, a leftist whose popularity is skyrocketing even as he approaches his term limit, has presented the measures as a safeguard against corruption. He accuses judges of kowtowing to organised crime in the country.
In 2023, an annual government survey revealed that nearly half of respondents had little to no trust in the legal system. It also discovered that crimes are not reported or investigated in more than 92% of cases.
Nonetheless, Lopez Obrador’s critics point out that the president has openly feuded with judges over decisions that do not support his policy aims. He has also faced protests over proposals to reduce and close government watchdog agencies such as the Institute for Information Access and Transparency.
Is reform necessary?
Critics believe that reform of Mexico’s criminal justice system is urgently needed: victims of crime frequently face barriers to justice, and those convicted of crimes are sometimes denied due process.
However, legal experts such as Rios Figueroa say Lopez Obrador’s proposals are more populist populism than sound policy.
This judicial reform is erroneous in the sense that it will not generate the results that the government claims, according to the vast majority of experts and practitioners, Rios Figueroa stated.
He labelled the initiative as “arbitrary,” claiming Lopez Obrador’s supporters are attempting to push it through “without real deliberation.”
Rios Figueroa listed numerous areas in which Mexico’s justice system requires reform, including reforms to public prosecutors’ offices and a reorganisation of the mechanism by which citizens can seek constitutional rights protection.
The reform plan “does not touch” those regions, he stated. Such things “are not the areas that are addressed in Mr Lopez Obrador’s proposal”.
Tyler Mattiace, an Americas researcher at the charity Human Rights Watch, also claimed Lopez Obrador and his partners’ reform agenda falls short.
Their approach will do little to solve the real bottleneck in Mexico’s judicial system: prosecutors’ willingness and capacity to probe, he noted in a report published earlier this month.
If [Lopez Obrador] and President-elect Sheinbaum want to ensure that Mexico’s justice system works for everyone, they must renounce their battle against judges and commit to repairing the weakest link in the system: prosecutors’ offices.
Are there any upcoming reforms?
The judicial makeover would necessitate a constitutional amendment that would require a three-fourths vote in both chambers of the country’s congress.
The ruling coalition, led by the Morena party, now holds the necessary seats in the lower chamber. The coalition is likely to fall a few seats short of the Senate threshold, but it will most likely secure the necessary votes by reaching out to other legislators on both sides of the aisle.
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Speaking to reporters on Tuesday, Lopez Obrador mostly dismissed this week’s strikes as futile.
“With all frankness and respect, I’d say to them that [the strike] might even help us because if the judges and magistrates and ministers are not working, at least we’ll have the guarantee that they are not going to let criminals of organised crime go free,” he claimed, as reported by Reuters.
ITAM professor Rios Figueroa regarded the strike as a final resort. He said that the striking legal personnel intend to use public pressure to prevent the reforms, but this is a hazardous strategy.
The strike will add to Mexico’s already high levels of anxiety about the stability of the rule of law and electoral democracy, maybe causing lawmakers to halt, he said.
“It is unlikely, in my view, but possible.”
