President Claudia Sheinbaum, her governing party, Morena, and arguably Mexico as a whole just dodged a rather large bullet.
Despite her landslide victory and her party’s super-majority in both legislative houses, allowing for constitutional changes, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum’s recent assumption of power has been all but smooth. As we reported just over a month ago, on the third day of her presidency, Mexico’s Supreme Court plunged the country into a constitutional crisis by seeking to derail, or at least delay for as long as possible, the now-former AMLO government’s judicial reform package, which had already passed both houses:
For the first time ever, Mexico’s Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation (SCJN) has decided to submit a constitutional reform for review. The reform in question involves a root-and-branch restructuring of the judicial system* and it has already passed both legislative houses with the necessary two-thirds majorities. It is bitterly opposed by members of Mexico’s opposition parties, the judiciary, big business lobbies, and the US and Canadian governments.
[On October 3] the SCJN admitted an appeal against the government’s judicial reform program by a majority of eight votes to three. With this ruling, the Supreme Court hands over the dispute consideration to one of the judges that voted in favour of the resolution. The court could also issue a stay, essentially suspending the constitutional reform. The Mexican financial daily El Financiero described the ruling as “the last bullet” (interesting choice of words) against the now-former Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s “Plan-C” reforms.
That last bullet has now been spent, and it missed the target narrowly. On Tuesday [Nov 5], the Supreme Court met to rule on whether to strike down key parts of the judicial overhaul, including drastically scaling back the election of judges and magistrates by popular vote, one of the most controversial aspects of the reform.
If the Supreme Court ruled in favour of the resolution and the Sheinbaum government stuck to its guns, it would set up “a direct confrontation between two pillars of government that, legal scholars say, has little to no precedent in recent Mexican history,” wrote the New York Times last week (h/t Robin Kash).
Sheinbaum said she was unwilling to negotiate “what the people have decided and is already part of the Constitution” while the eight judges who had voted to admit the appeal were now expected to vote in favour of it. For the resolution to pass, eight out of eleven votes were needed. A full-blown constitutional crisis seemed inevitable — until one of the eight judges broke ranks and voted against the resolution, arguing that the country’s highest court does not have the power “to say what the Constitution should or should not include.”
“Wow, Wow, Wow!”
Eight versus three suddenly became seven versus four: one vote short. But then the unthinkable happened: the court’s president, Norma Piña, suggested that the minimum number of votes be reduced from eight to six. Even some of Piña’s fellow judges were struck by this desperate attempt by Mexico’s most senior judge to change the rules of the game in the middle of the game. The judge sitting next to Piña, who had voted against the resolution, summed up the moment with three words (in English): “wow, wow, wow!”
“It was blatant confirmation of the court’s political intentions, which went far beyond what you’d expect in a judicial debate,” said the veteran political commentator Denise Maerker. “It disqualified [the whole process]… It was a political ruse that ended up exposing the president of the court and the terrible job she has done presiding over the court.”
Days before the hearing, it was revealed that in December Piña had met up with the leader of the Institutional Revolutionary Party, Alejandro Moreno Cárdenas, at the home of fellow Supreme Court judge Juan Luis González Alcántara Carrancá — and not at the Mexican Institute of Culture, as Piña had claimed. Among the issues discussed was the development of a joint plan between Piña and the main opposition parties to prevent Sheinbaum and Morena from winning the June 2 elections.
The plan clearly didn’t work: Sheinbaum ending up winning the biggest majority in modern Mexican history while Morena secured qualified majorities in both legislative houses, giving them the power to pass sweeping reforms to Mexico’s constitution…
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Nick Corbishley 