President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador is leaving his successor in Mexico a volatile currency, tepid economic growth, and the widest budget deficit since the 1980s. But the most urgent challenge Claudia Sheinbaum will face is calming investor fears over the outgoing leader’s overhaul of the judiciary.
The plan, which will see Mexico elect thousands of judges and magistrates nationwide, was approved this month amid outcry from the opposition, investors, and business leaders who fear it will remove checks and balances on the ruling Morena party and erode the rule of law.
Sheinbaum, who takes office Oct. 1, signaled continuity a day after the vote, confirming that most of the existing Finance Ministry team will remain in their posts. But given the current president’s record of clashing with private business while giving handouts to the heavily indebted state oil company, it’s unclear how reassuring that will be to investors.
In addition to riling two of Mexico’s biggest trading partners — the US and Canada — and raising questions about judicial independence, the overhaul has sparked concern about how far Morena will go to pass other radical reforms proposed by AMLO, as the outgoing nationalist leader is known. The list includes eliminating independent regulators in the energy and telecom sectors in favor of ministerial oversight.
Sheinbaum will “bear a heavy political cost for the approval of the judicial reform,” said Amrit Singh, executive director of the Rule of Law Impact Lab at Stanford Law School in California. The president-elect “will have trouble convincing Mexicans that she genuinely intends to place their interests above political calculations that require her to continue AMLO’s legacy.”
The way in which Morena engineered its legislative victory in the final month of Lopez Obrador’s six-year term, by flipping one opposition senator amid allegations of coercion, only added to fears that the party will stop at nothing in its pursuit for power.
The senator who cast the decisive vote — at the last minute, after a prolonged absence — called the reversal of his earlier position against the reform “the hardest decision” of his life. Another opposition lawmaker never made it to the floor, amid allegations that his father was detained and his house surrounded by police officers.
The change in the senator’s vote came after a top-ranking Morena member, former Interior Minister Adan Augusto Lopez, allegedly promised that the government would shelve corruption investigations against him and his family, according to political columnists in Mexico. And the opposition lawmaker who never made it to the session was threatened with his father’s arrest if he left the city of Campeche and followed through on his pledge to vote against the plan, according to his Movimiento Ciudadano party. An El Pais investigation suggested that his absence was agreed to beforehand.
AMLO acknowledged at his Sept. 11 daily press briefing that Lopez might have spoken with the senator who changed his vote, but denied that the congressman had been paid or threatened. “In politics, it is always necessary to choose between disadvantages and to seek a balance between efficiency and principles,” the president said about the strategy to get the missing vote.
Even Mexican pundits who previously defended the Morena leadership were shocked that the president and his allies took such flagrant measures to get the contentious reform approved. So now it’s up to Sheinbaum to repair the party’s image and to show that her legislators will get in line behind someone other than AMLO, whose son was named to a top Morena leadership post on Sunday.
“He is imposing on her a scenario that is highly conflictive and disruptive by promoting an enormous reform — the most important in decades — just before she starts her government,” said Ricardo Becerra, president of the Institute of Studies for a Democratic Transition, a think tank in Mexico’s capital.
Despite the challenge, Sheinbaum has sought to develop her own plans over the past months. Speaking to reporters last week, she denied that Lopez Obrador will continue to have a commanding voice during her administration, noting that he’s repeatedly said he’s retiring to write a book.
However, the president-elect said she will continue implementing AMLO’s vision for Mexico, including judicial reform.
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