Workers and university students opposed to the recently approved reform of the judicial branch, so that judges can be elected by popular vote, demonstrated at the headquarters of the Congress of the central state of Puebla and other state congresses in Mexico while the reform was approved in 18 states of the country.
The approval occurred in the congresses of the states of Guerrero, Oaxaca, Tabasco, Quintana Roo, Veracruz, Baja California, Nayarit, Colima, Durango, Morelos, Yucatán, Baja California Sur, Puebla, Tlaxcala, Campeche, Sinaloa, Querétaro and Tamaulipas, in less than 21 hours, after being approved in the first minutes of this Wednesday in the Mexican Senate.
As it is a constitutional reform, the reform required the approval of two-thirds of the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate, and now of more than half of the 32 local congresses, that is, 17, dominated by the ruling National Regeneration Movement (Morena), so it would lack approval in another seven states, which will practically occur in the next few days.
In Puebla, groups of protesters were pushed back a few meters from the doors of the state congress by hundreds of police and metal fences. At times, the protesters confronted the security agents to try to get through, but were unsuccessful.
With the slogans “The Judiciary will not fall, it will not fall!”, “The Judiciary will stop!”, “Puebla, this is your fight!”, through megaphones, the protesters sought to have their claims heard by the congressmen inside the state Congress.
After dark, white candles began to be lit to ask the legislators not to approve the reform. They formed a chain of prayer. However, the deputies began the session without seeing them, without listening to them, and without considering their complaints.
The protesters’ spokesman, José Ramírez, said that their struggle does not end with the approval of the reform, and that they will continue to demonstrate until their grievances are heard.
“There are those who cannot see the dramatic nature of this reform. You do. It is good that you are here. We are making history. As a very wise person once said, we are on the right side of history. Maybe not today, not tomorrow, we will be recognized, but at some point this resistance will be recognized,” he said.
The Congress of Oaxaca, a state in southern Mexico, became on Wednesday the first of the country’s 32 local parliaments to approve President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s controversial judicial reform, which needs the endorsement of 17 entities because it is a constitutional initiative.
Just hours after the Senate approved the bill, the Congress of Oaxaca unanimously approved the initiative with 41 votes in favor, to have popular elections for judges, magistrates and the Supreme Court starting in 2025.
In the early hours of the morning, amid allegations of intimidation of opposition legislators, the Senate approved with 86 votes in favor and 41 against the constitutional initiative presented by López Obrador, and which the president-elect, Claudia Sheinbaum, will implement in her first year of government, which begins on October 1.
The bill was passed amid unprecedented protests by judges, law students and judicial workers, who stormed the Senate, forcing lawmakers to hold a session in an alternate location, where protesters accused Mexico City police of spraying them with gas.
The reform has raised alarms from organizations such as the UN, Human Rights Watch, the International Bar Association and Mexico’s trading partners, such as the United States, over possible interference by the Executive and interest groups, such as organized crime, in the upcoming electoral campaigns of judges.
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