Mexico’s Senate Approves Contentious Judicial Overhaul After Protesters Storm Chamber

Mexico’s Senate voted early Wednesday to overhaul the country’s judiciary , clearing the biggest hurdle for a controversial constitutional revision that will make all judges stand for election, a change that critics fear will politicize the judicial branch and threaten Mexico’s democracy.

The vote came after hundreds of protesters pushed their way into the Senate on Tuesday, interrupting the session after it appeared that Morena, the governing party of outgoing President Andrés Manuel López Obrador , had lined up the necessary votes to pass the proposal.

The legislation sailed through the lower chamber, where Morena and its allies hold a supermajority, last week. The Senate posed the biggest obstacle and required defections from opposition parties.

One appeared to come Tuesday from the opposition National Action Party (PAN) after a lawmaker who had previously spoken out against the overhaul took leave for medical reasons and his father, a former governor, suggested he would vote for the proposal.

The Senate voted twice on the bill, both times 86-41, with the second coming around 4 a.m.

The legislation now needs to be ratified by the legislatures of 17 of Mexico’s 32 states. The governing party is believed to have the necessary support after major electoral gains in recent elections.