MEXICO CITY (CN) — In a situation never before seen in Mexican history, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has hand-picked his preferred choice for the country’s next Supreme Court justice, after none of his three nominees received a qualified majority vote in the Senate in the early morning hours on Thursday.
He wasted little time in choosing Lenia Batres Guadarrama, a former federal deputy and legal adviser to the executive branch. She took the oath of office in Mexico’s Senate after announcing Thursday afternoon she would replace former Justice Arturo Zaldívar.
In addition to being a member of the president's ruling Morena party, Batres is also the sister of Mexico City Mayor Martí Batres, also of Morena. Until Thursday, she served as the chair of López Obrador's executive legal advisory council.
Throughout his term, López Obrador has maintained that there is no nepotismo or cronyism in his government.
Mexico’s Constitution states that, in the event that no one from two three-candidate shortlists receives a two-thirds vote in the Senate, the final decision must be made by the head of the executive branch.
Speculation that the Senate would not be able to decide on a candidate came after Morena Senator Ricardo Monreal announced Wednesday afternoon that a prospective deal between his and the Citizens’ Movement party had fallen through, tanking all three candidates’ chances of receiving enough votes to be appointed.
“We were building a broad agreement since yesterday, but in the end it didn’t materialize,” he told reporters after the potential alliance foundered.
No candidate from this second round received the two-thirds required for nomination after two rounds of voting as Wednesday evening's session ran late into the night. Batres received the most votes in the second round with 54 out of 121 votes cast.
Neither Batres nor the other two candidates have any experience as a judge. Like Batres, María Estela Ríos González also serves on López Obrador’s legal advisory council as council chair. His third option, Berth Martha Alcalde Luján, is the sister of Luisa María Alcalde Luján, López Obrador’s Secretary of the Interior.
Lack of judicial experience is not unprecedented for a Supreme Court justice in Mexico, according to Luis Eliud Tapia, a legal consultant at the Washington D.C.-based global criminal justice watchdog Fair Trials.
“It's a good idea for people without a judicial career to be on the Supreme Court, as long as they’re independent and impartial,” he said in an exchange on X, formerly Twitter.
That, however, is not the case with Batres or the other two candidates López Obrador presented to the Senate. All have openly expressed loyalty to the president and his project to transform Mexico.
Choosing candidates with such clear political ties to the head of the executive branch does not send a good message to Mexico’s legal community, said Rodrigo Brito Melgarejo, a law professor at Mexico’s National Autonomous University.
“It reveals that the nomination has been politicized,” he said. “Rather than looking for a person with an adequate profile, one that is the best for the makeup of the maximum tribunal of the country, they made decisions based on a diagnosis of political character, not one that would be ideal for a Supreme Court justice.”
Political analysts took the failed nomination as another sign that López Obrador intends to keep his thumb on the scale after he leaves office next December.
“He’s leaving behind people who will be loyal to him,” said José Antonio Crespo, a research professor at the Mexico City government think tank CIDE.
Crespo noted this in the Morena candidates for the next Mexico City mayor. López Obrador has expressed support for political ally Carla Brugada, the former borough president of the Mexico City neighborhood Iztapalapa, all but tanking the campaign of former capital police chief Omar García Harfuch, also of the Morena party.
“So López Obrador is going to try to keep influencing, maybe not making all decisions completely, as though he were still president, but he’ll still try to have a say in what he thinks is important,” Crespo said.
This is not unique to outgoing Mexican presidents, but López Obrador — who goes by the term of endearment AMLO, his intials — has much more support for his personality than previous heads of state.
“How long will he be able to keep it up? Who knows? Because we know that the power of ex-presidents weakens over time,” Crespo said.
He mentioned López Obrador’s weakening physical strength as well. The president has contracted Covid-19 three times since the start of the pandemic. In April, rumors that he suffered a heart attack ran through political circles in Mexico, after he allegedly fainted while on a trip to the state of Yucatán.
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