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Mexico’s federal judges walked out of their courtrooms on Wednesday to protest against President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s plan to fire them and have their replacements elected in an overhaul they say threatens judicial independence.
The leftist president is pushing to completely reshape the judiciary in his final weeks in office, replacing all federal judges, including those on the Supreme Court, with new ones via popular elections next year and in 2027.
Mexico’s legal community and international experts have said the overhaul is a direct threat to judicial independence, the rights of minorities and the rule of law, while US business groups have said it could damage bilateral trade. Judges in some US states are chosen by popular vote, but only socialist Bolivia elects its Supreme Court, according to Washington-based Federal Judicial Center.
Mexico’s judges and magistrates voted overwhelmingly this week to stop work from Wednesday morning for an indefinite period, demanding that the reform process be paused.
Outside the shuttered headquarters of the federal justice system in eastern Mexico City on Wednesday, striking judiciary staff had set up gazebos grouping each court or tribunal. They waved Mexican flags and chanted “friend, understand, my work defends you”.
“This isn’t a job that requires political feeling but years of experience, acquiring sensitivity not just legal knowledge,” said Fernando Rangel Ramírez, a magistrate at the protest. “There are weaknesses in the justice system but those should be fixed via a holistic reform — not just the mass firing of judges.”
Leading American business associations including the American Petroleum Institute and National Mining Association warned that the reform and others proposed by Mexico’s outgoing president risked harming bilateral trade and investment.
“Without the ability of US investors to have fair and predictable recourse in Mexico’s judicial system, enforcement of USMCA [the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement] will come under additional strain,” the groups wrote in a letter to US secretary of state Antony Blinken and made public on Wednesday.
López Obrador’s Morena party strengthened its majority in congress in June elections, and he has vowed to push through the changes before his successor, Claudia Sheinbaum, takes office in October.
An instinctive politician with 60 per cent approval ratings, the president has transformed Mexican politics in his nearly six years in office. He has slashed spending on the civil service and redirected it to mega projects and social programmes, while seeking to weaken checks on his power.
López Obrador frequently criticises judges by name in his morning news conferences and has said direct elections would bring them closer to the people. On Tuesday he shrugged off the strike and repeated his message that the judiciary was corrupt.
“Most Mexicans won’t care . . . it will even help us that the judges and magistrates and ministers aren’t here — we have at least the guarantee that they won’t free criminals,” he said.
The judicial reform is part of a package of 18 constitutional changes López Obrador has proposed to cement his legacy. Others include eliminating some regulators, putting the National Guard under military control and removing proportional representation in congress.
Mexicans have long criticised their justice system as slow, ineffective and riddled with corruption but the parts that citizens rate as the worst, such as police and prosecutors’ offices, will not be touched by the proposed changes.
Most cases are heard in local jurisdictions. Legal experts say the federal system — which handles cases such as those that involve organised crime or disputes between companies — has professionalised and improved in recent years, with competitive selection exams and increased specialisation.
Some labour groups representing court workers began striking on Monday, while judges and magistrates are suspending work on Wednesday. They will leave a skeleton staff in place to deal with urgent or life-threatening matters.
If the reform passes congress, it would create a significant logistical and political challenge for Sheinbaum, who will be tasked with implementing it. She has enthusiastically backed the plan, but political analysts say López Obrador is tying her hands with a problem that could bog down her first years in office.
“It sends a really bad message to the international community,” said Saúl López, a professor at Tecnológico de Monterrey’s school of government. “It’s going to be a big distraction . . . this is going to mark Sheinbaum’s presidential term before it even begins.”
Miguel Bonilla, a 54-year-old magistrate, said: “Federal judges start from the bottom . . . this reform seeks to destroy the professional judicial service. They’ve sidelined us to a point where we don’t have an alternative to put the brakes on this.”
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