Mexico City, Mexico — Senators from Mexico’s ruling MORENA party on Wednesday successfully passed a controversial judicial reform bill after it had already been fast-tracked through the lower house of Congress last week.
The constitutional reform would allow judges and magistrates to be elected by popular vote, which critics — including from within Mexico’s judiciary — worry could disrupt the country’s democracy.
Senators were able to engineer a majority of votes needed thanks to an unlikely alliance with Senator Miguel Ángel Yunes Márquez, a former political rival from the National Action Party (PAN) who faces accusations of corruption.
MORENA, the political party of outgoing President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who proposed the reform in February, was one vote away from securing its passage on Tuesday when hundreds of people pushed into the Senate chambers to protest the bill. When the session resumed, the ruling party secured an alliance with the senator accused of corruption.
MORENA achieved a super-majority in the lower house of Congress in the June 2 general elections, but fell short of achieving the same in the Senate, which meant the party’s aspirations of passing the judicial reform were not a foregone conclusion as of this week.
After the bill was fast-tracked through the lower house last week, the party worked tirelessly to build enough support in the Senate, including luring two rival senators from the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) on September 10, bringing them to 85 of the 86 votes needed to pass the bill.
Meet the Yunes’s
As MORENA senators scrambled for support, and senators from all parties prepared to vote on the judicial reform, the PAN party reported that Miguel Ángel Yunes Márquez, the senator from the state of Veracruz, was missing.
The senator had missed a key meeting held by the PAN party to reaffirm their opposition to the reform vote and requested a leave of absence just hours before the debate.
As the hours passed, PAN officials reportedly feared that MORENA had approached the senator and his family to make a deal to exchange immunity in corruption cases for support on the reform, according to PAN leader, Marko Córtes.
Senator Yunes Márquez faces accusations of falsifying documents to prove his residency in Veracruz when he ran for mayor in 2021, among others. A district judge issued an arrest warrant in July. The senator responded at the time from Jacksonville, Florida, where he was allegedly receiving medical treatment, that he was being politically persecuted.
On Tuesday, just hours before the reform vote the younger Yunes Márquez appeared on the Senate floor. Amid some applause as well as shouts of “traitor,” the PAN senator announced his support for the controversial judicial reform.
Cortés accused MORENA of making a backroom deal with the Yunes family, promising to end the investigations against the Senator and his family in exchange for their support.
“It is evident that there was a pact of impunity, it is evident that the persecution has ended, and Fernando Yunes will be able to take office as a local deputy because we knew he had an arrest warrant and also had to be out of the country,” said Cortes. (Fernando Yunes Márquez is the younger brother of Senator Yunes Márquez and is himself accused of corruption related to his state congressional campaign in Veracruz in June.)
“I did not come to the Senate to seek personal benefits or political revenge; I came to the Senate to fight for a just Mexico. One does not betray by acting according to one’s principles; it takes more courage to go against the current than to go with it. Time will tell,” said Yunes Márquez on the Senate floor on Tuesday.