The board moves: Will the judges wait until 2028?
The political scene has a new script in development. This Wednesday, President Claudia Sheinbaum confirmed what many in the halls of Congress were already whispering: her government is seriously analyzing postponing the first judicial election until 2028.
“We are analyzing it, it has to do with resources,” Sheinbaum said in his morning conference, making it clear that the economic factor weighs. But the warning came later: > “There would have to be a constitutional reform for this.”.
That’s the crux of the matter. It is not a simple change of date. It is moving the foundations. The current Constitution establishes that election for 2027, as part of the great judicial reform approved by Congress.
An initiative with a name and surname
The draft is already on the table. It was presented by Morena heavyweights: deputies Alfonso Ramírez Cuéllar and Olga Sánchez Cordero, along with senators Javier Corral and Susana Harp. His proposal modifies transitional articles so that the vote is “the first Sunday of June 2028”.
But this isn’t just about calendars. It is a multi-level strategic play. The initiative also seeks to change the rules of the game for who can be a judge.
Imagine this: it would no longer be enough to have a good academic average. The project requires mandatory certification from the National Judicial Training School. And it places historical locks: those who have been secretaries of state, attorneys general, federal or local deputies, municipal presidents… not even political party militants during the year prior to the call cannot be magistrates.
For five of the nine ministers of the Supreme Court, half of their professional experience (5 out of 10 years) would be required to have been within the Judiciary itself.
Sheinbaum said that the Secretary of the Interior, Rosa Icela Rodríguez, is already holding talks with the INE. The message between the lines is clear: they are measuring the terrain, calculating forces in Congress for a constitutional battle.
Why move the pieces now? Some see a strategy to decouple the judicial election from other electoral processes and give it greater weight of its own. Others perceive an attempt to gain time and better polish the candidates of the official project.
My father always said that in politics, when they talk about ‘resources’, they rarely mean just money. They refer to political capital, time, and the necessary alliances. This announced pause smells like that: a tactical recalibration.
The theater of power has its new act. And we are all watching the curtain.
