Mexican opposition says it has votes to block AMLO's reform

Mexico’s opposition is pledging to block President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador’s controversial overhaul of the judicial system in the Senate, where the ruling coalition is within a hair of securing a two-thirds majority needed to change the Constitution.

Lopez Obrador’s Morena party and its allies are still one vote short of the 86 needed to approve a constitutional change in the Senate, according to opposition leaders. And just a few days before the bill is expected to go to a vote in the upper house, they are promising no one will change sides.

“There is a mathematical chance of blocking this in the Senate,” lawmaker Julen Rementeria, from the main opposition party PAN, said in a phone interview. “We have to stand united against reform.”

Morena and its allies crushed the opposition in the June election, winning a so-called supermajority in the lower house, and later securing 85 of the senate’s 128 seats. Yet opposition hopes of blocking the judicial reform grew this week when an undecided member of its base revealed his vote.

“After having studied and read it, my vote is going to be totally against it,” Daniel Barreda, from the Movimiento Ciudadano party, told reporters on Thursday. “My vote is against this reform that threatens the impartiality of justice and violates human rights,” he added in a message published on X.

Lopez Obrador’s proposed overhaul of the judiciary, which establishes that all federal judges should be elected by popular vote, is seen by critics as a maneuver by the ruling party to take control of the only institution that could impose checks on its power. The bill was approved in the lower house by a comfortable margin early on Wednesday, after nearly 18 hours of debate.

The peso, which has sold off in recent weeks partly due to concerns about the reform, was 0.7% weaker on Friday as most emerging market currencies posted losses.

President-elect Claudia Sheinbaum has expressed confidence that there will be enough votes to approve the bill in the Senate as well. “There is no possibility of turning back the reform, that was the decision of the people of Mexico,” she said.

The leader of Morena in the lower house, Gerardo Fernandez Norona, said the governing coalition is confident that it already has the two-thirds majority in the Senate. “We don’t have any concern in that sense. I would say that we even have more votes than we need.”

85 Votes or 86 Votes?

Since two-thirds of 128 is 85.3, there is some confusion in Mexico as to whether a supermajority would require 85 or 86 votes. Morena’s leader in the Senate, Adan Augusto Lopez, said Wednesday that the ruling coalition only needs 85 votes, but the opposition maintains that 86 are necessary. That can become a heated discussion should the government obtain exactly 85 pro-reform votes.

One strategy for Morena is to convince some opposition lawmakers to skip the discussion, which would reduce the number of votes needed since the two-thirds majority is calculated among lawmakers present in the session. Alejandro Moreno, head of the opposition PRI party, said the government has offered money while putting pressure on opposition senators to support the reform, El Economista reported.

“The swing vote debate is one for the ages, but more likely to be seen in House of Cards,” said Rodrigo Villegas, chief executive officer of political risk consultancy Suass Group. “The original proposal may suffer some carving from the opposition, but that’s the game that since the beginning the new administration and Congress were seeking.”

In the unlikely scenario in which the ruling coalition obtains exactly 85 of 128 votes in favor of the reform, the matter may need to be decided by the Supreme Court, he said.