MORENA’s Electoral Reform Fails When Allied Parties Vote with the Opposition

Politically, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum has been very successful and her MORENA party and its allies have a majority in the Mexican Congress.

But look at what occurred on March 11th. President Sheinbaum’s political reform failed in the Chamber of Deputies (equivalent of the U.S. House of Representatives).

There were 259 votes in favor of the proposal, 234 against and one abstention. But it failed to receive two-thirds of the vote, which is necessary to pass a constitutional reform.

What did the reform include and why was it defeated?

The political reform would have reduced public spending on elections. It would have eliminated the selection of Mexican senators by proportional representation (32 out of 128) and would have changed the rules on the use of representatives chosen through proportional representation (200 out of 500).

So why did this measure fail?

While it’s true that MORENA and its allies have a majority in Congress, MORENA by itself doesn’t. When you add the MORENA members with its two smaller allied parties (the Labor Party and the Green Party) the coalition has a majority.

What happened on March 11th is that MORENA voted for the measure, but all the other parties voted against it, including MORENA’s allies the Labor Party and Green Party.

Now that’s interesting. But it wasn’t a surprise, it was already known before the bill was even introduced what the allied parties planned to do. Still, it was a significant defeat.

Acccording to analyst Arantza Alonso, “The defeat is significant because it highlights that the legislative coalition has limits, something that perhaps seemed unthinkable a few months ago, and that Morena did not negotiate well enough before presenting the initiative.”

On the other hand, she said that “The reform is not directly related to issues that matter greatly to citizens, like security, the economy or the relations with the US, so Sheinbaum’s approval won’t be significantly affected.”

Even before the vote, both President Sheinbaum and Ricardo Monreal (leader of the MORENA delegation in the lower house) announced that MORENA has a “Plan B” to carry out the reform.

But whatever follows doesn’t change the fact that MORENA’s two allies voted against MORENA and with the opposition parties PAN, PRI and Movimiento Ciudadano.

That reveals that MORENA doesn’t have total control over its allies.

How will this affect the Mexican political panorama? We have to wait and see.