MEXICO CITY (Reuters) -Mexico’s ruling Morena party and its allies have won a supermajority in the lower house of Congress but not in the Senate, the party’s president said on Sunday, falling just short of the two-thirds majority needed is in both houses. to change the constitution.
Preliminary results from the June 2 elections, which elected Claudia Sheinbaum as Mexico’s first female president in a landslide, had shown her party, Morena, and its allies coming close but missing a two-thirds majority.
Ultimately, Morena’s coalition, which also includes the Green Party and the Labor Party, will control 83 seats in the 128-seat Senate, just below the supermajority threshold of 85 seats, Morena President Mario Delgado said in a social media post .
In Congress’s 500-member lower house, the ruling left-wing coalition will have 372 seats, above the supermajority threshold of 334 seats, Delgado said.
“With a supermajority in the House of Commons and a majority in the Senate, we will deepen the transformation to continue building a country of well-being and shared prosperity,” Delgado said.
Mexico’s election authority INE had said it would recount 60% of the votes. Mexican opposition leader Xochitl Galvez, who lost to Sheinbaum in the election by about 30 percentage points, had called for an 80% recount of the ballot boxes.
Uncertainty over the composition of the next Congress, which takes office in September, roiled markets last week after both outgoing left-wing President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador and newly-elected President Sheinbaum expressed support for sweeping constitutional reforms.
The possible reforms include the elimination of independent energy regulators while consolidating power in the executive branch, in addition to an overhaul of the judiciary, which will see popularly elected Supreme Court justices.
(Reporting by Daina Beth Solomon and Diego Ore; Editing by Will Dunham)
