In June, Mexico’s ruling Morena party celebrated the most demonstrative political win in the country in more than 30 years. Morena’s Claudia Sheinbaum, the preferred successor of current President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, took nearly 60 percent of the vote, more than 30 percentage points ahead of her closest competitor. Her party also won a two-thirds supermajority in the lower house of Congress and just missed a supermajority in the Senate by two seats. The new lawmakers will be sworn in on Sept. 1, one month before Sheinbaum takes office.
Because of Mexico’s unusual electoral timeline, López Obrador will have a brief window to pass a flurry of constitutional amendments right before he leaves office, assuming that several opposition senators vote in the ruling party’s favor—as some analysts expect them to do.
López Obrador has already unveiled his agenda for his lame-duck period: 18 constitutional and two legal reforms that he collectively calls Plan C. These would entail sweeping changes to the judiciary, the electoral process, and Mexico’s Congress. He intends for these reforms to “transform” political life in Mexico by giving the public more control over institutions long stained by accusations of corruption.
But critics worry that in reality, the reforms would weaken democratic checks and balances and help Morena create a one-party state. In the past week, growing concern over López Obrador’s plan has come to a head both at home and abroad, sparking mass protests among Mexico’s judicial workers and even a diplomatic spat with the United States and Canada.
This is not the first time that López Obrador has intended to pass structural reforms to the judiciary. His earlier package, known as Plan B, focused on the National Electoral Institute (INE), Mexico’s autonomous agency that oversees elections. In February 2023, the Senate passed a series of reforms, spearheaded by López Obrador, that would slash the INE’s budget, cut thousands of its staff, and minimize its responsibilities—a move that prompted both the Mexican opposition and major U.S. think tanks to criticize the president for what they considered democratic backsliding.
“Previous electoral reforms were the product of political consensus and took years to complete,” said Luís Carlos Ugalde, a former chairman of the INE. “This one was pushed through by only one party.”
Thousands of people protested the measure in Mexico City while wearing hot pink—the INE’s color, which is now associated with critics of López Obrador. A few months later, the country’s Supreme Court struck down the reforms, determining that the voting process had violated the rules of Congress. (Members of the legislature had only four hours to consider the extensive package.)
If successful, López Obrador’s Plan C will ensure that these changes to the INE are secured before Sheinbaum’s inauguration, hobbling the agency’s capacity to serve as a watchdog in future elections. But the outgoing president’s ambitions in the package go further than electoral reform. Essentially, they are a continuation of López Obrador’s “austerity” doctrine, an ideology that seeks to shrink government institutions that he argues no longer serve the public good.
Notably, López Obrador has proposed an overhaul of Mexico’s judicial branch, which he claims is rife with corruption and elitism, by allowing for judges—including those on the Supreme Court—to be elected by popular vote. Critics argue that this is a way to politicize the courts and remove checks on the executive, particularly since the Supreme Court blocked several of López Obrador’s constitutional reforms in the past two years.
In addition, López Obrador’s reforms would introduce changes to Congress that would favor larger political parties by scrapping parts of the existing system of proportional representation and reduce the lower house from 500 to 300 members and the Senate from 128 to 64 members.
The reforms would also place the country’s National Guard under the Defense Ministry, adding to a series of recent policies that give the military further control over the daily lives of millions. Mexico’s military was deployed to the streets—ostensibly to fight organized crime—in 2006; since then, violent crime has soared in Mexico, nearly 90,000 people have officially gone missing (though the real number is likely higher), and the military and National Guard have been accused of widespread human rights abuses.
Other amendments are much less controversial and align with Morena’s left-leaning ideology, especially its embrace of sweeping social programs and direct economic assistance to Mexico’s poorest. These include proposals to ban fracking, modify the country’s pension system, support workers seeking to buy homes, and set a minimum monthly wage for teachers, police officers, doctors, nurses, and members of the military.
Critics fear that Plan C will serve to consolidate power with the executive, paving the way for Morena to form a one-party dynasty in the model of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), which ruled Mexico for 71 years until 2000. A group of 41 jurists, economists, and political scientists from the National Autonomous University of Mexico published a 20-page analysis in June outlining how Plan C, if passed, will funnel power into the hands of the president. The study characterizes Plan C as “capital letter damage” to Mexican democratic norms.
Guadalupe Correa-Cabrera, a professor at George Mason University who researches U.S.-Mexico relations, said that Morena would need a structural reform program such as Plan C—and not just popular candidates and policies—to follow in the footsteps of the PRI. “They are not building enough of a foundation with their social programs alone to win” term after term, she said. “The PRI had the perfect dictatorship, but Morena is vulnerable to possible obstacles, like a global financial crisis or a natural disaster.”
The party may also be vulnerable to a change in leadership. López Obrador’s impassioned calls for dramatic change and his rambling, no-filter persona have crowned him as one of the world’s most popular leaders. But without his cult of personality, Correa-Cabrera believes that Sheinbaum and any future Morena leader may flounder, justifying electoral reforms that could guarantee the continuation of the party’s leadership, no matter how charismatic the candidate.
“How is she going to do the mañanera?” Correa-Cabrera said, referring to the outgoing president’s daily, two-hour (or longer) press conference. “There is no one like López Obrador.”
But Ugalde, the former INE chairman, believes that if López Obrador manages to push through these structural reforms, Sheinbaum and future leaders will not need to fill her predecessor’s shoes to dominate Mexican politics. “Sheinbaum will continue to dismantle autonomous organizations within the government,” he predicted. “She will follow AMLO’s policies to condense power.”
Sheinbaum, who has pitched her six-year term as a continuation of her mentor’s vision, affirmed in her victory speech on June 2 that she supports his decision to pass Plan C before she is sworn in. López Obrador, for his part, promised that forming an agenda would be a joint effort with Sheinbaum.
As Sept. 1 approaches, opposition to López Obrador’s agenda has ramped up. On Aug. 20, the National Union of Magistrates, which represents around 55,000 people, announced a strike of federal judicial workers to protest the set of reforms, particularly the ones that would overhaul the judicial system. “Today, working people and judges have decided to defend in unity: the Republic, the independent judiciary, and the separation of powers to guarantee the future of the next generations,” the union wrote in a statement.
A few days later, Ken Salazar, the U.S. ambassador to Mexico, echoed these concerns. He said in a statement that he worried electing judges would “create turbulence” and make judicial figures vulnerable to political corruption and interference by criminal groups.
López Obrador has since taken his defense of his judicial reforms to the next level. On Tuesday, he paused relations with the U.S. and Canadian embassies in Mexico in response to both countries’ concerns over the reforms. In a press conference, López Obrador said his government would “take our time” with this pause and that relations would only be reestablished once the United States and Canada displayed sufficient respect “for the sovereignty of our country.”
This week, protesters demonstrating both for and against the reforms have stormed the halls of Mexico’s Supreme Court. In his press conference on Wednesday, López Obrador mused that those who oppose his reforms must have economic agendas, because there could be no other reason for objecting to them. “I can’t find a logical explanation,” he said. Sheinbaum, meanwhile, has defended López Obrador’s plans.
Still, while it is unclear how the final month of López Obrador’s presidency will unfold, some Morena supporters hope that Sheinbaum will quietly split from her predecessors’ agenda once she is given the reins.
Geizi, a woman in her 20s who works for a government-run task force on climate change, said her group is set to be axed as a part of current reforms. (Geizi did not want to share her last name out of fear of retribution.) Her team is hoping Sheinbaum, who holds a Ph.D. in energy engineering, will reverse the order.
“That’s our only hope,” Geizi said. “One would think Sheinbaum would care.”
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