Mexico City’s Congress voted 46-17 on Thursday to delay elections for its remaining local judges and magistrates until June 2028. In Panama, the Democratic Revolutionary Party formed a commission to settle its position on election reform. Both political institutions are revising rules that govern access to elected posts and the authority of party officials.
Who Reaches the Ballot
Mexico City’s reform shifts posts left unfilled in 2025, along with vacancies, to an election scheduled “without exception” for 4 June 2028. Judges whose terms end in 2027 will stay in office until election winners take their oaths. Rafael Guerra will remain president of the Superior Court of Justice, the city’s top court, until September 2028.
The change brings the capital’s constitution in line with a federal amendment that pushed the next national judicial election back a year. Mexico’s Congress declared the amendment valid on 1 June, after 25 state legislatures approved it. Mexico City’s Congress ratified the federal changes, which also made foreign interference grounds for annulling an election.
The city’s election preparations will start with the first session of the Mexico City Electoral Institute in the first week of April 2027, rather than September. Congress must publish its call for candidates by 30 April 2027, setting out each stage, date and post.
Evaluation committees appointed by the city’s legislature, executive and judiciary will screen applicants. Each committee will shortlist the four highest-rated applicants for each post, down from ten under the previous process. A public lottery will cut each list to two names per post, with gender parity required; the executive, legislature and judiciary will formally nominate those two candidates.
The reform also drops the requirement for candidates to submit a three-page essay explaining their candidacy and five reference letters from neighbours or colleagues. Alberto Martínez Urincho, who presented the bill, said it provides “greater clarity, precision and legal certainty” for an orderly implementation.
The change applies only to judicial elections. It doesn’t postpone other votes or remove sitting judges. The wider judicial reform has drawn 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 2028 would be crowded, with a presidential recall vote and four state elections also due. Seventeen deputies opposed Mexico City’s local reform; reports didn’t detail their objections.
A Party’s Rule Dispute
In Panama, the PRD’s national board formed a commission on Thursday after more than six hours of talks following an internal leadership dispute. National Board members and party lawyers make up the commission. It will review proposed changes to the election reform bill and send one party position to PRD deputies in the National Assembly.
The dispute began with a 28 September letter from Balbina Herrera, the PRD’s secretary-general, to party deputies. She questioned a proposed change to Bill 699 that would make each party president its legal representative. In the PRD, the secretary-general holds that role. 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.
Robinson, the party president, said disputes should stay within the party. “What I will not do, even if I am right, is go to the media to talk about a colleague,” he said, TVN reported. Robinson also chairs the Assembly’s Government Committee, which approved the bill in first debate after changing, removing or adding 46 of its 168 articles.
The Assembly Debate Stalls
On 1 October, Panama’s Electoral Tribunal rejected the committee’s changes as setbacks. The independent election authority 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. La Prensa reported that tribunal magistrates had been summoned to the chamber the following week, when the debate was due to start.
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. The commission had no published deadline. The party also called a nationwide membership drive for 11 October, saying sign-up points were set and making registration a priority for local structures. TVN said both decisions were tied to renewal of the party’s internal bodies planned for 2027.
“Let no one confuse debate with division,” the party statement said. It added: “Unity is built by talking, taking decisions and working together.” The PRD governed Panama from 2019 to 2024 under President Laurentino Cortizo and is led by Benicio Robinson.