Mexico’s Transition Chatter
Sheinbaum confirmed as president
The electoral process concluded last Thursday with the Electoral Tribunal giving Claudia Sheinbaum the majority certificate.
Although the candidate from the alliance of Morena, the PT, and the Green Party won at the polls, the Tribunal still needed to resolve the challenges presented by the opposition and qualify the validity of the elections. The Electoral Tribunal’s ruling definitively puts an end to the litigation promoted by the opposition, which denounced irregularities in the election and requested the annulment of the results. The magistrates considered that a generalized context of violence in the country was not proven and that López Obrador did not improperly use his Mañanera conference to intervene in the election. The TEPJF magistrates concluded that the elections were free and that the results had certainty and legality. After receiving the proof of majority, the next thing will be to inform the Chamber of Deputies that Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo is eligible and that the election was valid, publishing it in the Official Gazette of the Federation (DOF) that there is a new President of Mexico.
Friday: INE will decide on a supermajority
This week, the National Electoral Institute (INE) plans to resolve the assignment deputies and senators, confirming whether Morena and its allies will have a supermajority in Congress. There is some ambiguity in the law on whether collation should be treated as one party (the opposition view) or a collection of parties (the Morena view). On the opposition view, the Morena coalition would be denied a near super-majority due to over-representation limits per party, and on the Morena view, it would be given one. Most analysts expect Morena to prevail.
The session is scheduled for next Friday, August 23, at 10 a.m. The so-called proportional representation assigns positions based on the percentage of votes obtained by a political party in a geographic region. Its purpose is to guarantee the participation of political minorities in the integration of the legislature according to their representativeness. In our country, this method assigns 32 senators and 200 deputies.
On one hand, the president-elect has spoken out so that the INE respects the will of the citizens and applies the law in the allocation. Former officials and former judges expressed in a letter to the INE that “it is not just about applying a mathematical formula” and asked that the INE correctly interpret the constitution. So far, Morena has stated that it has a supermajority of deputies and is 2 positions in the Senate away from achieving it.
The new version of judicial reform is being discussed
The Morena deputies and their allies from the PT and the PVEM made 100 modifications to the judicial reform initiative of Andrés Manuel López Obrador. The new version began circulating last Friday.
The coordinator of the Morena deputies, Ignacio Mier, maintains that at least 60 modifications were taken from the forums held from June 27 to August 9 throughout the country. However, the opposition groups of the PAN, PRI, and MC reported that the results of the open parliament were not considered.
Among the most controversial issues, the election of judges remains. It is established that the first election will be held on the first Sunday of June 2025 to elect ministers of the Supreme Court, magistrates of the new Judicial Disciplinary Court, members of the new Administrative Body, half of the positions of district judges and circuit magistrates (between 800 and 900 positions) and vacancies. The other half will be elected at the polls in 2027, concurrently with the elections for federal deputies.
Today, workers of the Judicial Branch of the Federation (PJF) in five states of the Republic – Nuevo León, Zacatecas, Yucatán, Morelos, and Coahuila – begin an indefinite work stoppage in protest of the upcoming approval of the reform to the Judicial Branch of the Federation.