The former president of Mexico Ernesto Zedillo (1994-2000) assured that our country “in a few months” has lost “the category of democratic country,” after criticizing the judicial reform promoted by the current president, Claudia Sheinbaum, which seeks the election of judges by popular vote, and the suppression of several autonomous bodies.
Zedillo predicted this Friday that Mexico is on its way to becoming “an autocracy”, this during a virtual intervention at the 2025 Economic Perspectives Seminar organized by the Autonomous Technological Institute of Mexico (ITAM),
“In a few months, Mexico seems, without a doubt, to have lost the category of being a democratic country (…) We citizens went to vote to choose our new representatives in a democratic country, we did not go to the polls to decide what “Mexican democracy had to be destroyed”Zedillo assured.
Sheinbaum, who won by a large majority in the 2024 presidential elections, replaced the now former president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador (2018-2024), in October and has promised to advance the policies of his predecessor.
Zedillo, who currently directs the Center for the Study of Globalization at Yale University (United States), cHe reiterated that Mexico is now a country in which “there are no fair rules or institutions that guarantee the application of rules to carry out correct electoral competition and in which there is no independent and professional judiciary that ensures that the other powers are fulfilling their constitutional obligations.”
“Formally, it can be called democracy, but in fact it is not democracy,” he stated in his speech.
The former president’s words contrast with those of Sheinbaum, who stressed in December that the country closes the year 2024 as the “most democratic in the world” thanks to the judicial reform promoted by the ruling party.
Mexico is heading this year to its first election at the polls for judges, magistrates, the Supreme Court, the Electoral Tribunal and the new Judicial Disciplinary Court after the constitutional reform of the Judiciary was enacted last September.
Likewise, the Mexican Congress with a pro-government majority approved last year the disappearance of seven autonomous bodies, including the National Institute of Transparency, Access to Information and Protection of Personal Data (INAI) and the Federal Economic Competition Commission (Cofece), both These measures have received harsh criticism from the opposition and international organizations.
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