President Andrés Manuel López Obrador signed his controversial Judicial Reform Bill into law on September 15, shortly after more than half of Mexico’s state legislatures approved the constitutional changes.
Only legislators in Jalisco and Querétaro voted against the measure, while several states, including Nuevo León, deferred their vote.
President-elect Claudia Sheinbaum, who joined López Obrador for the signing just hours before the Grito Independence ceremony, expressed full support for the initiative, despite media speculation suggesting she had reservations.
Sheinbaum had earlier responded forcefully to comments by former President Ernesto Zedillo (1994-2000), who had called the reform “tyrannical” and “demagogic” in an interview with journalist Ciro Gómez Leyva. “This reform is carefully designed so that the Legislative and Executive branches, now controlled by a single party, can determine who will be judges in the judicial system,” said Zedillo, who in 1994, paradoxically, eliminated 12 of the high court’s 23 members and replaced all of the remaining 11 justices in a move that was considered highly undemocratic.
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