Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador. Photo: Google

By KELIN DILLON

While Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) has long sought to reform Mexico’s electoral laws, both of the federal executive’s efforts – a dead-in-the-water constitutional reform halted due to insufficient legislative support, and AMLO’s subsequent pivot to so-called Plan B reforms to Mexico’s laws that was deemed partially invalid by Mexico’s Supreme Court (SCJN) due to violations of the legislative process on Monday, May 8 – have resoundingly failed to make an impact. Now, just one day after the first half of Plan B’s judicial defeat, López Obrador announced his intentions to create an additional Plan C electoral reform during his daily press conference on Tuesday, May 9.

Upset by the decision of the SCJN’s Monday plenary session, AMLO used his press conference as an opportunity to rail against the sitting SCJN justices, calling Mexico’s highest court in the nation a “supreme conservative power,” accusing them of circumventing the will of the popularly elected Mexican legislature, and denying that any violations of the legislative process took place during Plan B’s passage.

“Mexico’s judicial power has no remedy, it is rotten,” said AMLO. “The justices are acting in a factious manner.”

“In an act of arrogance and authoritarianism, the SCJN justices dare to cancel the law, acting at the service of a rapacious minority who dedicated themselves to plundering the nation and who want to return to their jurisdiction, now with the support of judicial power,” continued the federal executive. “The SCJN goes to the extreme of correcting the decisions of another power, a factious interventionism.”

López Obrador then launched into the details of his tertiary plan to finally bring his electoral reforms to fruition: elect enough members of his National Regeneration Movement (Morena) party to the Congress of the Union during the 2023 elections to pass through his desired constitutional reforms uncontested with a two-thirds majority.

“We need to achieve a qualified majority in Congress, so that reforms can be made to the constitution,” said AMLO. “To be able to reform the constitution, 334 deputies are needed. We must go for 334 deputies in the next election to be able to carry out constitutional reforms. That is the Plan C.”

After the announcement of Plan C, AMLO revealed yet another part of the initiative – this time, reforming the constitution to turn the appointment of SCJN justices into a popular election, which López Obrador claimed would be complete before he leaves office in September 2024.

“I always thought that we could improve the judiciary. But no, it is rotten. A reform must be carried out,” concluded López Obrador. “And since the executive cannot and should not touch the judiciary, it has to be the people; it has to be with the democratic method.”