The Mexican Senate was a battlefield on Tuesday, to the point that in the middle of the afternoon dozens of demonstrators protesting against judicial reform outside the legislative building broke into the plenary session and the legislators had to suspend the session. The tension grew in a few minutes and the members of the Senate’s security forces were overwhelmed by the demonstrators. The president of the Senate, Gerardo Fernández Noroña, later called for the resumption of the session at the alternate headquarters of the Upper House, in the Antigua Casona de Xicoténcatl, already heavily guarded by Mexico City police. From early in the morning, if not for days, there was an atmosphere of maximum tension in view of the imminent vote on the reform to the Judicial Branch proposed by Andrés Manuel López Obrador. Inside and outside the Upper House there was a hive of gossip, blackmail, threats, accusations and rumors of desertions in the ranks of the opposition.
That dense atmosphere was carried over to the plenary session, when Fernández Noroña started the session. The majority bloc, formed by Morena, PT and PVEM, seeks to ratify the amendment that was easily approved by the deputies last week. A single vote keeps the ruling party from endorsing López Obrador’s initiative, which requires a qualified majority in the Senate: two thirds, that is, 86 seats. Morena and its allies have 85 votes assured. The hunt to obtain the missing support has been wild, according to the senators of the PAN, PRI and MC, who have denounced in the session on Tuesday, without presenting evidence, that their colleagues have been subjected to pressure and even arrests by the authorities of the States governed by the ruling party. “You know that you do not have the votes to pass the constitutional reform and that it is a reality that they are putting pressure, using the State Attorney General’s Offices to obtain the votes they are missing,” said PAN member Ricardo Anaya.
Clemente Castañeda, coordinator of Movimiento Ciudadano, has accused from the podium that Senator Daniel Barreda had been arrested along with his father in Campeche. The parliamentary leader has directly accused the governor of the State, the Morena member Layda Sansores, and has assured that the purpose of this capture was to prevent the legislator from appearing at the vote. The senators of the PAN, PRI and MC —who together have 43 seats— have entrenched themselves for days to prevent a defector from betraying their ranks and giving Morena the missing vote to approve the judicial reform, whose most controversial point is that all federal judges be elected by vote at the polls. The opposition bloc has demanded that the session be suspended until Barreda’s whereabouts are known. “There are no coincidences in politics,” Castañeda said. “What a coincidence that today, when we have a significant vote for the future of the nation, they want to silence us in a bad way, using the worst methods, the worst instruments of political coercion,” Castañeda said. Governor Sansores immediately denied this accusation in a message on her social media accounts.
In the Senate, Morena coordinator Adán Augusto López reported that he called the Attorney General’s Office and the Court of Justice of Campeche and that they denied that Barreda or his father were captured. Later, the president of the Senate, Fernández Noroña, assured that he personally had communication with Barreda, who told him that he was in Mexico City “in perfect condition.” The Morena senator Citlalli Hernández called for calm among the opposition: “Friends, realize, if he does not answer your calls, he simply does not want to answer you.” Hours later, Castañeda insisted that MC did not know for sure the whereabouts of Barreda, who he said was “incommunicado.”
Outside the legislative building, hundreds of people were demonstrating in defense of the judiciary and against the government reform. Although the Senate was guarded by the capital’s police, after 4:00 p.m. a group of young people entered through the door that leads to Paseo de la Reforma, which is not normally used. Inside, the security personnel tried to stop the protesters with fire extinguisher fluid. While some of the young people tried to knock down the doors of the session hall, others chanted: “The judiciary will not fall, it will not fall!” and “Where are they, where are they, the senators who were going to listen to us!” After several attempts, the doors of the plenary were thrown wide open and the crowd took the seats of the senators. Inside, they sang the National Anthem. By then, the legislators of the Morena-PT-PVEM bloc had already left through alternate exits. The senators from the PAN, PRI and MC remained in their seats, as the youth shouted: “You are not alone, you are not alone!” The ruling party has accused the opposition of “disrupting” the session. The entry of hundreds of protesters into the session hall exposes the security protocols of the authorities and reveals, at the very least, negligence.
Before the break-in, the big question in the plenary session was where the missing legislators were. Barreda was the second absent senator. On Monday night, the PAN faction had no news of one of its coreligionists, Veracruz native Miguel Ángel Yunes Márquez. He did not arrive at the meeting that the PAN members were going to have and did not answer the phone, not even to his bench coordinator, Guadalupe Murguía. The suspicion began to spread that Yunes Márquez would be the missing vote acquired by Morena. After midday on Tuesday it was learned that the senator, a member of the Yunes clan, a family of politicians from Veracruz who face several accusations of corruption, had requested leave. Fernández Noroña has informed the plenary session of this, pointing out that Yunes Márquez has claimed health problems and that he has asked that his substitute take the oath in his place.
The substitute is none other than the senator’s father, Miguel Ángel Yunes Linares, former governor of Veracruz and one of López Obrador’s most important enemies. Noroña later reported that Yunes Linares was in a room next to the plenary. After 1:00 p.m., the Senate was about to swear in the substitute, a previous step to reading the ruling on judicial reform, the core of the storm. Yunes Linares arrived accompanied by two important Morena members, Óscar Cantón Zetina and Felix Salgado Macedonio. When he entered the plenary, he was received fraternally by Augusto López. From the opposition benches they began to shout at him: “Traitor, traitor, traitor!” Yunes Linares has asked to speak to defend his son’s reputation, after Marko Cortés, senator and leader of the PAN, criticized Yunes Márquez moments before. “Is that the pact of impunity? “Are you asking for leave, are you absent?” Cortés had asked. “You still have time to be a hero of the country and not a traitor of the country,” he had said from the podium.
The PAN split was a given, given the suspicion of the unexpected adhesion of the Yunes clan to the ruling party. Yunes Sr. has accused Cortés of “lynching” his son for not committing to vote as dictated by the PAN leadership. The father has revealed that, in the morning, Cortés spoke with Yunes Márquez to threaten to expel him and his family from the party. Yunes Sr. has reiterated that his son was absent due to a spinal disease and that he might later take back his seat, but he has let it be seen that the Yunes vote will be according to their conscience, that is, without a line. Cortés has retorted to Yunes Linares and has reminded him that his son publicly committed to be present at the session and vote against the judicial reform. “I am frankly disappointed with what you have done,” he has said. His voice broken and his eyes red, the PAN leader has recalled his years of friendship with Yunes Sr. “It would have been more decent, my dear friend, if you had taken our call and told us: I am going to betray them,” he said.
The PRI was not left behind in the exchange of accusations. Alejandro Moreno, Alitosenator and leader of the party, has pointed out that his fellow members have also been subjected to pressure. He himself has been, he said. At the same time as the session in the Senate, the National Electoral Institute (INE) was debating a project regarding changes to the PRI statutes that would allow Alito Moreno to extend his mandate in the party. A few days ago, a first project was circulated that validated these changes. The PRI member has denounced that this morning this project was replaced by another that would reverse his position in the leadership.[Nos están] implying that if we pull with the majority [de Morena]”They will not take away the presidency of the PRI from us. And I will not be pressured by the PRI leadership or by any accusation or threat. We will vote against this reform, which is crazy,” Moreno said.
The PRI leader had stated that he had proof of the pressures from the ruling party to which his fellow members have been subjected. Moments later he gave a press conference. When asked by journalists about the evidence he referred to, he said that they were collecting and putting it in order. After the commotion over the incorporation of Yunes Linares, the Senate Board of Directors called a new session this afternoon in which the reform to the Judicial Branch will finally be voted on. A Morena source has stated that, in the previous meeting held by the legislators of that bench, they were informed that the ruling party already had the necessary votes to ratify the amendment. The minimum is 86 senators. But it could well be 87.
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