MEXICO CITY (AP) – After two opposition senators defected, Mexico’s ruling party said Wednesday it was close to a Two-thirds majority in both houses of Congress.
President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s ruling Morena party said it had won two senators from the now-defunct Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD), which disappeared as a national party after failing to win at least 3% of the vote in the June 2 elections.
Having secured a two-thirds majority in the lower house, the Morena party and its allies now need just one vote to gain a similar majority in the Senate. These majorities would enable Morena to push through controversial constitutional changes.
These changes include a proposal to force all judges to stand for electiona move that critics say would further concentrate power in the president’s hands, undermine the independence of the judiciary and open it to the influence of those who provide money to finance these campaigns. The US ambassador to Mexico publicly expressed similar concerns last week.
After days of speculation President-elect Claudia Sheinbaum – a member of López Obrador’s party – said on Wednesday that two opposition senators had decided to join the ruling party’s bloc in the Senate.
The two senators, Araceli Saucedo and José Sabino, were immediately labelled traitors by their former allies and party colleagues in the opposition.
“History will condemn them as traitors who participated in the attack on democracy,” wrote Xochitl Galvezthe former opposition presidential candidate, on her social media accounts.
In addition, social media users deliberately published campaign videos of the two in which they promised not to switch parties before the election on June 2.
“Like you, I’m sick of the same old locust politicians (jumping from party to party),” Senator Sabino said in the video. “You have to keep your word.”
Some had hoped that Sheinbaum would be more open to consensus and negotiations than her predecessor and political mentor López Obrador, who is leaving office on September 30. But the news was rather disappointing.
Sheinbaum’s party appointed Senator Gerardo Fernández Noroña as the President of the Senate. Fernandez Noroña is known for his scornful, insulting speeches and his firm refusal to wear a face mask at meetings even when regulations required him to do so at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Since the party with the most seats also gets to appoint the chairman of the lower house, the congress is headed by deputy Adán Augusto López, an old-style political enforcer whose style is reminiscent of the regional political bosses of the 1940s and 1950s.
This week, after a final appeal, the judges of the electoral court confirmed the ruling party’s two-thirds majority in the lower house, and a list of candidates of about 20 constitutional amendments the Morena party plans to prevail.
Morena will probably be able to lure away a senator from one of the smaller parties. Constitutional changes must also be approved by two-thirds of the state legislatures, and Morena and her allies control about two dozen of Mexico’s 32 states.
US Ambassador Ken Salazar said last week that the proposed judicial changes pose a “risk” to Mexico’s democracy and “threaten the historic trade relations” between Mexico and the USA
Salazar said the proposed change in the law would “help cartels and other evildoers exploit inexperienced judges for political reasons” and would “create turmoil” both economically and politically for years to come.
This aroused the ire of the outgoing president, who said this week that he had put relations with the US embassy “on hold” following the ambassador’s comments.
