Mexico City’s Congress voted 46-17 on Thursday to move the election of the city’s remaining local judges and magistrates from 2027 to 4 June 2028. Judges whose terms end in 2027 will stay in office until their elected successors are sworn in. The change brings the capital’s constitution into line with a federal amendment that pushed the next national judicial election back a year.
Mexico City’s judicial timetable
The 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.
Preparations will start with the first session of the Mexico City Electoral Institute in the first week of April 2027, not September. By 30 April 2027, the Congress must publish a call for candidates setting out each stage, date and post.
The city measure changes when and how judicial elections take place. It doesn't postpone other votes or remove sitting judges. Mexico’s Congress declared the federal amendment valid on 1 June 2026, after 25 state legislatures approved it. Mexico City’s Congress ratified both the federal changes and the city measure.
Evaluation committees appointed by the city’s legislature, executive and judiciary will screen candidates. Each committee will shortlist the four highest-rated applicants per post, rather than 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.
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. Alberto Martínez Urincho, who presented the bill, said it provides “greater clarity, precision and legal certainty” for an orderly implementation.
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, but reports didn't detail their objections. The wider judicial reform has drawn criticism over low turnout and the independence of elected judges.
Panama’s party dispute and election rules
In Panama, the Democratic Revolutionary Party formed a commission on Thursday after more than six hours of talks, seeking one party position on proposed election-reform changes. National Board members and party lawyers sit on the commission. It will review proposed changes to the reform bill and send a unified position to PRD deputies in the National Assembly.
The party said members had discussed their differences openly and respectfully. “Let no one confuse debate with division,” its statement said. TVN reported that the decisions were tied to renewal of the party’s internal bodies planned for 2027. “Unity is built by talking, taking decisions and working together,” the statement added.
The dispute began with a 28 September letter from Balbina Herrera, the PRD’s secretary-general, to party deputies. She questioned a change to Bill 699 that would make each party president its legal representative; in the PRD, that role belongs to the secretary-general. In a 29 September leadership resolution, the party said Herrera’s letter “does not come from the majority will,” censured her unilateral statements and backed the 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 election authority’s objections
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 letting winners keep two posts, and looser resignation rules for prospective candidates.
The full Assembly’s second debate has stalled. La Prensa reported that the tribunal’s magistrates had a summons to appear in the chamber the following week, when debate was due to start. The PRD’s commission had no published deadline. The party 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 PRD also called for a nationwide drive to register new members on 11 October, saying sign-up points were set and making the effort a priority for local structures. The party governed Panama from 2019 to 2024 under President Laurentino Cortizo and is led by Benicio Robinson.