Mexico City, Mexico
Reuters
Mexico’s ruling Morena party and its allies have won a super-majority in the lower house of Congress but not the Senate, the party’s president said on Sunday, falling just short of the two-thirds majority needed in both houses to change the constitution.
Preliminary results from the 2nd June vote, which elected Claudia Sheinbaum as Mexico’s first woman president in a landslide, had showed her party, Morena, and its allies coming close but missing out on the two-thirds majority.
Ultimately, Morena’s coalition, which includes the Green Party and the Labor Party, will control 83 seats in the 128-seat Senate, just shy of the 85-seat super-majority threshold, Morena President Mario Delgado said in a social media post.
In the 500-member lower house of Congress, the ruling leftist coalition will have 372 seats, above the 334-seat super-majority threshold, Delgado said.
“With a super-majority in the lower house and a majority in the Senate, we will deepen the transformation to keep building a country with well-being and shared prosperity,” Delgado said.
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Mexico’s INE electoral authority had said it would recount 60 per cent of votes. Mexican opposition leader Xochitl Galvez, who lost to Sheinbaum in the election by some 30 percentage points, had called for a recount of 80 per cent of the ballot boxes.
Uncertainty over the makeup of the next Congress, which takes office in September, roiled markets last week since both outgoing leftist President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador and President-elect Sheinbaum signaled their support for sweeping reforms to the constitution.
The potential reforms include the elimination of independent energy regulators, while consolidating power in the executive branch, in addition to an overhaul of the judiciary that would see popularly elected Supreme Court judges.
