“Given the national situation, we must ask ourselves: what have we failed to do so that throughout this national journey [...] we hear from all of them, time and again, that justice is distant, inhumane, that justice is a nightmare?”

You’d be forgiven if you thought this quote came from President Andés Manuel López Obrador, President-elect Claudia Sheinbaum, or any Morena activist, given that the party is currently pushing for a once-in-a-generation overhaul of the country’s judicial branch through constitutional amendment.

But you’d be mistaken. The quote actually comes from Supreme Court President Norma Piña, who now embodies the opposition to judicial reform. She made this comment during her interview with El País newspaper following the National Meeting for a Security and Justice Agenda, which was organized by the judicial branch itself. It was billed as a wide-ranging dialogue for “people interested in improving security and justice in Mexico.”

Elsewhere, Piña expressed surprise that instead of talking about the “separation of powers” and “judicial independence,” the Mexican people were far more interested in talking about their rights and the experiences of victims with the justice system.

What terrible ignorance from the Mexican Supreme Court president!

How is it that Piña never realized before that most people who have ever interacted with the country’s justice system are left with a bitter taste in their mouth?

Sheinbaum’s massive election victory on June 2 was largely due to voters seeking to reward Morena for its track record in office; but it’s also due to the population consciously and intentionally responding to López Obrador’s call for a supermajority, precisely to give his party the legislative tools to overhaul the judiciary. Morena conducted surveys and found that more than 80 percent of the population back a major change to the judiciary.

Why? Besides a legacy of widespread accusations of corruption and failing to deliver justice to victims who have seen their abusers walk away with impunity, the judiciary has made questionable rulings favoring corrupt actors and has consistently sided with the old neoliberal order.

Astoundingly, critics such as Mariana Velasco-Rivera, assistant professor at the Maynooth School of Law and Criminology, claim that Morena sowed this negative attitude toward the judicial branch, and that the AMLO government was “the only one peddling the idea that the judiciary is broken [and] untrustworthy.” But clearly, Morena did not need to “sow” discontent.

Critics of Morena's judicial reform proposals don’t appreciate the wide-scale political change that the “Fourth Transformation” is pursuing. Far from being an example of Morena’s “creeping authoritarianism,” it is about creating a judicial system responsive to victims. Crucially, it’s also about defeating the neoliberals taking refuge inside the judicial branch, one of the country’s remaining conservative strongholds. Without reform, the judicial branch would likely continue to sabotage the “Fourth Transformation” of Mexico.

Thankfully, voters gave the Morena coalition the votes necessary to transform the justice system. After the election, Norma Piña sharply departed from her usual condescension and is now apparently contrite and willing to talk — a transparent effort to keep her position and power. Now, as even she admits, given Morena’s supermajority in Congress, judicial reform will happen.

May the “nightmare” soon be over.