The overwhelming victory of Morena, the political party of Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO), in the Mexican general elections in June has breathed new life into his plan for a comprehensive reform of the Mexican political system.

The president had originally proposed a 20-point package of constitutional amendments in February, but the package remained stuck in parliament without ever being voted on.

However, once the new Mexican Congress takes the oath of office on September 1, López Obrador can count on a qualified majority in the Chamber of Deputies and will be only two votes short of supporting his initiative in the Senate.

Buoyed by the election result, lawmakers from Morena and its allies have begun pushing the proposed constitutional changes through the Constitutional Affairs Committee in the House of Representatives. Some proposals have already been approved, and the full package – now consolidated to 18 proposals – is expected to be ready in time to be approved by parliament in September. Trying to pass the constitutional reforms will be López Obrador’s last major initiative, as his successor Claudia Sheinbaum – also elected in June – will be sworn in in early October, leaving the outgoing president just a month to push his proposal through Congress.

The reforms proposed by López Obrador cover a wide range of policy issues. He is determined to reform Mexico’s social security system before he leaves office, and some of the proposed changes aim to strengthen social security and other forms of public support. These include reversing cost-cutting measures on pension and social security programs implemented in the 1990s, making permanent a vocational training and apprenticeship program for young adults in Mexico, and enshrining in the Constitution a number of social benefits that are currently public law, including the disability pension system, programs to provide economic support to rural areas, and educational scholarships for poor students. The president also proposes the introduction of a new system of universal free health care for the country, with details to be worked out by parliament in the future.

Another package of reforms focuses on changes in the civil service. This includes a significant increase in the inflation-indexed minimum wage for civil servants in a number of key occupations, including education and health care. Other changes address a number of the president’s other priorities, including anti-corruption measures, animal welfare and environmental protection.

The most controversial part of the reform package, however, is a profound restructuring of the Mexican electoral and political system.

The first amendment in this part of the reform would halve federal campaign funding for parties and reorganize the Mexican legislature. The number of deputies in the Chamber of Deputies would be halved from 500 to 300 and the number of senators from 128 to 64. The amendment would also abolish the current two-tier electoral system, in which part of the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate are elected by proportional representation. Instead, all deputies would be elected in single-member districts by majority vote, a process that is more favorable to the majority party than proportional representation.

Another proposed law proposes a reform of the Mexican judicial system. Under this scheme, judges (including those of the Supreme Court of Mexico), currently appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate, would instead be chosen through popular elections.

The third part of López Obrador’s political reform is the abolition of independent agencies, including the National Electoral Institute (INE), which is responsible for monitoring and managing elections, and the Federal Institute for Access to Public Information and Data Protection. The responsibilities of these agencies are to be transferred to existing executive branch ministries under the supervision of the president, while their budgets are to be severely cut or eliminated entirely.

Finally, López Obrador has proposed integrating the Mexican National Guard into the armed forces and giving the president broad powers to use it unilaterally to maintain public order and security.

This is actually the president’s third attempt to reform the INE, which he says is corrupt and dominated by political opponents who undermine the integrity of Mexican elections. His first attempt was a constitutional reform in 2022, but it failed in Congress. His second attempt, a law he successfully pushed through the legislature and signed in February 2023, was declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court last year on the grounds that it was passed through a “corrupt defect in the legislative process.”

The result of these reforms would likely create a system that ensures Morena’s continued dominance in Mexican politics under Sheinbaum’s leadership. If AMLO can successfully push through the changes in his final month in office, she could be sworn in as president of an entirely new Mexico.

A political system institutionally dominated by Morena would be nothing new for Mexico. For nearly a century, the country was exclusively controlled by the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), a system that brought stability to the country after a long period of civil wars but was accompanied by massive corruption. This corruption allowed the flourishing of Mexican cartels, which used the proceeds from the burgeoning drug trade to influence local politicians and regional party leaders.

While corruption in Mexico has fallen sharply, it is still a widespread problem, and AMLO has tried to combat it with his Republican austerity program. Still, the new reform package risks reinstating old incentives and opportunities for cartels. The U.S. should closely monitor the results of the constitutional reforms if it wants to maintain a relationship with a Mexican government capable of restricting drug trafficking across the southern border.