Politics: What we can expect from the current Congress

MEXICO - Report 13 Sep 2021 by Guillermo Valdes and Francisco González

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Now that the first ordinary session of the 65th Legislature is underway we are starting to get more of an idea of what we can expect from lawmakers in the next three years, and it spells a tougher road ahead for President López Obrador throughout the final half of his administration. His Morena party remains the largest force in both chambers of Congress, and with the backing of his two minor party allies he can still pass basic legislation and most urgently get approval for his 2022 federal budget, but he has now been deprived of the qualified majority he had successfully deployed in the Chamber of Deputies the past three years to get constitutional reforms passed.

He must be less confident as to the loyalty of leading figures in his governing coalition as more politicians begin to make plans for what is to come after the AMLO presidency. In the case of his Workers (PT) and Mexican Greens (PVEM) allies, internal tensions could mean such calculations imply having to make greater concessions to assure their support for his legislative proposals, which so far largely consist of three poorly defined constitutional reform initiatives. It is not yet known which points in the massive and ungainly list of legislative proposals Morena has published might already enjoy or have the potential to win the president’s priority support, but given the obvious absence of any strategic planning behind the agenda, a big number of items are unlikely to ever reach the floor for debate.

Further complicating matters, AMLO also could face a largely unified opposition as the PRI, PAN and PRD parties of the Va Por México electoral coalition have established a congressional alliance with an agenda consisting of eleven generic topics without specifying the content of any of those points. However, their main objectives are to impede what they consider to be regressive reforms and deprive Morena of control over the Political Coordination Board that manages the agenda of all sessions of Congress. They will also be trying to exert influence over the congressional agency in charge of auditing federal, state and local governments, with the power to file administrative and judicial charges when it uncovers irregularities, a key perch from which to rein in AMLO’s administration.