Senator’s Silence Fuels Speculation AMLO Has Reform Votes

(Bloomberg) -- A Mexican opposition senator went dark on his colleagues Monday, igniting speculation that he had decided to provide the final vote President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador needs to usher through a judicial overhaul that has spooked global investors.

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Senator Miguel Angel Yunes Marquez, of the PAN party, has been in the spotlight of local news media for days. Political columnists have identified him as the most likely opposition senator to support ruling party Morena’s plan for a constitutional reform that would include the direct election of Supreme Court judges.

Colleagues reported being unable to reach Yunes beginning late Monday, with debate of the bill in the Senate scheduled to start Tuesday. Morena’s majority in the new Congress, sworn in this month, is just one vote short of the total it needs to pass a constitutional reform, so converting Yunes would do the job.

Yunes couldn’t be reached by Bloomberg. He had previously said he would vote against the reform along with the rest of the PAN’s senators.

“I make a respectful and firm call for him to confirm his position on the judicial reform,” the coordinator of PAN senators, Guadalupe Murguia Gutierrez, told reporters after a party meeting on the topic Monday night, which Yunes didn’t attend.

One outlet, El Sol de Mexico, reported late Monday without providing evidence that Yunes, a senator for the state of Veracruz, had switched sides and would support the reform.

The PAN is scheduled to hold a news conference in the Senate on Tuesday, minutes before the judicial reform is presented to the floor at 11 a.m. local time.

The president of the Senate, Gerardo Fernandez Norona, said Tuesday that Morena has all the votes it needs to pass the reform, without specifying whether Yunes was part of that total.

“It seems to me that the right thing to do is that the senator who is going to add his support to this very important, historic moment, in this very profound reform to the judiciary, should do so in his own voice,” Fernandez Norona said in a interview with Radio Formula. “I do not get involved in speculation.”

Arrest Warrants

According to an opinion article published by Milenio, Yunes had been offered that several arrest warrants against members of his family for alleged corruption cases would disappear if he supported the reform.

“We demand that the federal government stop pressuring opposition senators with corrupt offers and intimidating actions by the prosecutor’s office,” Murguia Gutierrez said Monday.

Morena’s leader in the Senate, Adan Augusto Lopez, has denied that the party has offered money or pressured opposition senators to vote in favor of the judicial reform.

The reform, which seeks to have all of Mexico’s federal judges elected by popular vote, requires approval by a two-thirds majority in both houses of Congress, plus a majority of state legislatures. The plan was comfortably approved last week in the lower house, and Morena has ample support in the states, so the Senate remains the only significant hurdle.

Investors have sold off the peso and other Mexican assets as the reform has gotten closer to reality. Critics including US Ambassador to Mexico Ken Salazar say the changes would reduce the independence of the judiciary, hurting confidence in the rule of law even as the country seeks more investment from foreign companies.

After the presentation of the bill on Tuesday, the Senate could begin voting on it the same day.

The opposition had no way to prevent Morena from getting the extra senator it needed to pass the reform, said Juan Carlos Villarreal, a political science professor at the Autonomous University of Mexico State.

“Who offers the best conditions? The one who has the power to offer goods or support to continue your political career, or the one who only has ethical values?” Villarreal said. “Our democratic system for decades has been dominated by personal interests over the common good.”

(Updates with PAN’s press conference in paragraph seven, Fernandez Norona statement in paragraph eight and analyst comment in final paragraph.)

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