MEXICO CITY (AP) — Mexico is poised to amend its constitution this weekend to require all judges to be elected, part of a judicial overhaul advocated by the outgoing president but criticized by critics as a blow to the country’s rule of law.
The amendment was passed by Mexico’s Congress on Wednesday and was ratified by the required majority of the country’s 32 state legislatures on Thursday. President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said he would sign and publish the constitutional amendment on Sunday.
According to lawyers and international observers, this move could endanger Mexican democracy, as the courts would be filled with judges loyal to the ruling Morena party, which has a strong grip on both Congress and the presidency after its landslide election victory in June.
López Obrador says the overhaul would end corruption in a system that most Mexicans agree is broken. But critics say the measure would deal a blow to checks and balances and make it easier for cartels and criminals to influence the courts.
The reform led to weeks of strikes and protests by judiciary workers, law students and many other Mexicans.
It overcame its biggest hurdle on Wednesday by passing the Mexican Senate. Angry protesters stormed the chambers Tuesday in a last-ditch effort to block the bill, but senators moved elsewhere and passed the measure in the early morning after hours of verbal wrangling.
By Thursday, 18 legislative bodies had already approved the revision.
López Obrador said he would time his signing of the measure for Mexico’s Independence Day celebrations on Sunday. The event will allow the populist leader to cement the legal transformation as his legacy just weeks before he leaves office on Sept. 30.
“Now that 18 people approve it, it is legal,” López Obrador said during a morning press conference on Thursday.
“It is an incredibly important reform, which confirms that in Mexico there is authentic democracy. The people who elect their representatives, their officials in all three branches, that is democracy,” he said.
