(Bloomberg) -- President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador’s controversial overhaul of the judicial system is likely to be approved by the Senate after an opposition lawmaker switched sides to vote in favor of it, during a debate marked by clashes between protesters against the plan and police.
Miguel Angel Yunes Marquez, of the opposition PAN party, said that after evaluating the plan, which seeks to elect all of Mexico’s federal judges by popular vote, he decided to support it.
“In the most difficult decision of my life, I have decided to vote in favor of the bill to create a new model for the administration of justice,” he said late Tuesday during the debate of the reform proposal in the Senate.
Since the reform seeks to change the constitution, it requires a two-thirds majority in both houses of Congress to be approved. After comfortably passing the proposal last week in the lower house, the ruling Morena party and its allies were just one vote shy of reaching the supermajority required to also approve it in the Senate. Yunes Marquez’s support for the plan virtually guarantees the ruling coalition the 86 votes it needs.
Debate on the reform is ongoing, with a vote expected late Tuesday or early Wednesday.
If it’s approved in the Senate, the plan must then receive the backing of state legislatures — most of them controlled by Morena.
AMLO’s proposal seeks to elect approximately half of Mexico’s federal judges by popular vote in 2025, including all Supreme Court justices. The other half would be replaced in 2027, when electoral court judges are expected to be elected.
Evening Clashes
The debate was marred with clashes. Earlier, senators had to change the location of the debate after hundreds of protesters opposed to the plan entered the main floor. After debate resumed in a different venue, demonstrators confronted police, trying to enter the new location, the former Senate building in downtown of Mexico City. Police sought to disperse the demonstrators with tear gas, Radio Formula reported.
“They know that we have the two-thirds [majority] and that’s why they tried to suspend the session,” said Senate President Gerardo Fernandez Norona.
Defecting Vote
Earlier Tuesday, Yunes Marquez requested a leave of absence for health reasons, missing the debate in which the reform was presented in the Senate. In the afternoon he joined the session to express his support for the bill, which critics say will eliminate check and balances, undermining democracy.
Senators of the PAN party said that since Monday he was unreachable, suspecting that the ruling coalition was pressuring him to support the plan. Political columnists had reported that party officials offered to eliminate investigations against his family on alleged corruption cases in exchange for his vote in favor of the reform.
The peso was broadly steady in Asian trading after investors had already positioned in anticipation the reforms would pass Congress.
The currency has weakened 15% against the dollar since the unexpected landslide congressional win by Lopez Obrador’s party in June, the worst performance among major currencies. The result — along with the unwinding of carry trades in global FX markets — knocked the peso from its two-year run among the best performing major currencies in the world.
The plan is a priority for AMLO, who has characterized it as a way to root out judicial corruption and wants to secure its approval before he leaves office at the end of September. But it has drawn backlash from judges, who are holding a strike against it, the Mexican opposition, investors and the US, who all say it will give the ruling party control of the judiciary.
--With assistance from Cyntia Barrera Diaz and Matthew Burgess.
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