MEXICO GOES BACK 42 YEARS

Today the National Electoral Institute (INE) will define the composition of the Chambers of Representatives and Senators, and despite the fact that the official coalition obtained 54% of the votes for the Congress of the Union in the last federal elections, the members of the General Council of the INE have decided to grant it 73% of the seats, that is, 364 representatives out of a total of 500.

The Institute does this because it has decided to interpret an article of the Constitution that establishes that political parties can obtain up to 8% of overrepresentation, that is, that they are assigned representatives by proportional representation, above the votes obtained.

In this case, the INE has decided to grant this overrepresentation to each of the parties that made up the official coalition, Morena, PVEM and PT, and not to the coalition. With this, the ruling party Morena and its allies have the qualified majority to modify the Constitution without the need for opposition votes.

In the Senate, the INE has awarded 83 positions (between victories by relative majority and seats by proportional representation), out of a total of 128 senators, which means that the ruling coalition is only 3 senators away from achieving the qualified majority to modify the Constitution.

Such dominance of the Chambers of Representatives and Senators by the ruling party had not been seen for 42 years (1982) when the then hegemonic party, the Institutional Revolutionary Party (which dominated Mexican politics for 71 years, from 1929 to 2000) occupied the presidency of the Republic, all the governorships (now Morena and its allies govern in 24 of 32 states) and the qualified majority in both chambers of Congress.

For 40 years, civil society, academics, intellectuals, middle classes, businessmen, etc. sought to turn Mexico into a liberal democracy, where there was a real division of powers, limiting the hegemony of the executive branch; where fundamental freedoms were respected; where corruption and organized crime were effectively fought; where merit and effort were recognized as the basis for advancement in public service; and where citizens' votes will be respected and counted democratically.

All of this was hampered by a hegemonic party regime, which represented the alliance between an entrenched corrupt political class; unions allied to powerful businessmen who manipulated the internal market at will; criminal groups protected by the government; inefficient bureaucracies dominated by cronyism; and a legal system based on collusion, friendships, and bribery.

Some progress was made from the early 1980s to 2018, with the establishment of electoral authorities independent of the government that organized reasonably clean elections accepted by citizens and political parties; autonomous bodies that began to supervise the performance of the government and its bureaucracies; competitive and meritocratic systems in different areas of government such as the Mexican foreign service and the Judicial Branch of the Federation; and greater participation by civil society to prevent government abuses and corruption.

Well, all of that has been lost in just six years. Since López Obrador came to power in 2018 with his Morena party (created with the participation of leftist groups and politicians from the Institutional Revolutionary Party who left this party), they have managed to recreate the old political system where the Federal Executive Branch is hegemonic; there is no real division of powers since the official majority in both chambers of Congress diligently complies with the orders given by the president; and now López Obrador is on the verge of achieving a complete reform of the Judiciary (with the qualified majority granted to him by the National Electoral Institute, where the majority of its counselors were also appointed by the Morena party), which will put the Judiciary on its knees before the president.

For this reason, members of the Federal Judicial Branch have begun a strike starting today, August 21, which will leave around 1,000,000 civil, commercial, labor and criminal cases unresolved, as they are against López Obrador's proposal to modify the way in which judges, magistrates and ministers of the Supreme Court are elected (now it will be through open elections, which will give a clear advantage to the ruling party to promote its candidates), and they reject the disappearance of the system established 30 years ago of contests and exams to advance in the judicial career.

Thus, the next president of Mexico, Claudia Sheinbaum, who will take office on October 1, will find herself in a major crisis, because the representatives and senators who will take office a month before her have already stated that the reform to the Judicial Branch will be carried out, although the members of said branch are not working.

Similarly, López Obrador is promoting other constitutional reforms (such as the disappearance of autonomous bodies in charge of government transparency, economic competitiveness and energy regulation), with which all the advances in democratic matters achieved for 40 years will be eliminated and thus Mexico will return to its authoritarian and anti-democratic past that characterized it for almost a century.