Search
AI-powered search, human-powered content.
scroll to top arrow or icon

{{ subpage.title }}

Mexico's President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador hands over a ceremonial baton of command to Claudia Sheinbaum after she was elected by the ruling National Regeneration Movement (MORENA) as its candidate to succeed him in 2024 in the presidential election, in Mexico City, Mexico September 7, 2023.

REUTERS/Henry Romero

Mexico’s president-elect pushes controversial judicial reform

In her first press conference since winning the Mexican election in a landslide earlier this month, president-elect Claudia Sheinbaumbacked a highly controversial plan to introduce a popular vote for the country’s Supreme Court justices.

The reform is the brainchild of current President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, aka AMLO, a charismatic left(ish) populist whose Morena party won a supermajority in Congress and fell just shy of one in the Senate.

Directly electing Supreme Court justices via popular vote would put Mexico in the company of just one other country that we know of: Bolivia, where AMLO’s ideological cousin Evo Morales instituted the practice in 2009.

AMLO and his supporters say the move would introduce more accountability to a system long dominated by corrupt elites.

But critics say it would dangerously politicize the justice system, upending the rule of law right as Mexico tries to catch an investment boom from “nearshoring” – that is, the trend of US-oriented companies moving their factories out of Asia as a way to skirt US-China trade tensions and avoid future global supply chain issues.

The skeptics could be right: The Mexican peso fell 2% after Sheinbaum’s comments.

Political violence in Mexico

Luisa Vieira

Graphic Truth: Mexico’s political murder problem

The Mexican political campaign season that concluded with the June 2, 2024, general election was the deadliest on record, with at least 34 candidates for local or state office killed during the preceding nine months.

According to observers at the Colegio de Mexico in Mexico City, nearly a third of the dead were members of current president Andres Manuel López Obrador’s ruling Morena party, whose candidate Claudia Sheinbaum won the presidential vote in a landslide.

Read moreShow less

Subscribe to our free newsletter, GZERO Daily

Latest