Mexico City’s Congress voted 46-17 on Thursday to delay the election of the city’s remaining local judges and magistrates until 4 June 2028. Judges whose terms end in 2027 will stay in office until their successors are sworn in. The decision shifts the timetable for voters and candidates but leaves the city’s current judicial leadership in place.
Who Controls the Ballot
The postponement brings Mexico City’s constitution into line with a federal amendment that moved Mexico’s next national judicial election from 2027 to 2028. Mexico’s Congress declared the amendment valid on 1 June, after 25 state legislatures approved it. Mexico City’s Congress ratified both changes.
The local reform schedules posts left unfilled in 2025, along with vacancies, for election “without exception” on 4 June 2028, El Universal reported. Rafael Guerra will remain president of the Superior Court of Justice, the city’s top court, until September 2028. The measure applies only to judicial elections; it doesn’t delay other votes or remove sitting judges.
Institutions appointed by the city’s legislature, executive and judiciary will organize the process. Their evaluation committees will shortlist the four highest-rated applicants for each post, down from ten. A public lottery will cut each list to two names, with gender parity required, and the executive, legislature and judiciary will formally nominate those two.
The reform also drops the requirement for candidates to submit a three-page essay explaining their candidacy and five letters of reference from neighbours or colleagues. Preparations begin with the first session of the Mexico City Electoral Institute in the first week of April 2027. Congress must publish the call for candidates by 30 April 2027.
The wider judicial reform has faced criticism over low turnout and the independence of elected judges. Rubén Moreira, who leads the opposition PRI in the lower house, warned in June that the 2028 calendar would be crowded, with a presidential recall vote and four state elections also due. Seventeen deputies opposed Mexico City’s local reform, though reports didn’t detail their objections.
Party Debate, Assembly Power
In Panama, the Democratic Revolutionary Party (PRD) formed a commission after a leadership dispute over proposed election reforms. The party’s national board made the decision on Thursday, 1 October, following more than six hours of talks. The commission, made up of National Board members and party lawyers, will review proposed changes and send one party position to PRD deputies in the National Assembly.
“Let no one confuse debate with division,” the party’s statement said. The PRD also called a nationwide drive to register new members on 11 October. Sign-up points were set, and the party made the drive a priority for local structures. TVN said both decisions were tied to renewal of the party’s internal bodies planned for 2027.
The dispute centres on Bill 699. On 28 September, Balbina Herrera, the PRD’s secretary-general, questioned a proposed change that would make each party president its legal representative; in the PRD, that role belongs to the secretary-general. A leadership resolution dated 29 September said Herrera’s letter “does not come from the majority will,” censured her unilateral statements and backed the reform proposal under consideration in the Assembly.
The Assembly’s Government Committee, chaired by PRD president Robinson, approved the bill in first debate after changing, removing or adding 46 of its 168 articles. On 1 October, Panama’s Electoral Tribunal rejected the changes as setbacks. It objected to higher donation caps, a rule allowing winners to keep two posts, and looser resignation rules for prospective candidates. The full Assembly’s second debate has stalled, and the tribunal’s magistrates had been summoned to the chamber the following week, La Prensa reported. The PRD said it hadn’t dropped the committee’s changes or split; it wanted a unified position before the Assembly decided rules for the 2029 election. Robinson said disputes should stay inside the party: “What I will not do, even if I am right, is go to the media to talk about a colleague,” TVN reported.
Alberto Martínez Urincho, who presented Mexico City’s bill, said it provides “greater clarity, precision and legal certainty” for an orderly implementation.