This is particularly significant as Mexico heads toward a critical midterm election in 2027, its next presidential election in 2030, and as it continues its downward slide away from a liberal democracy of checks and balances by\u00a0degrading democratic institutions<\/a>\u00a0and guardrails, ensuring\u00a0control over the judiciary<\/a>, and frequently vilifying\u00a0journalists<\/a>\u00a0and media outlets.<\/p>\n The bill in question, one of the most retrograde pieces of legislation in Mexico\u2019s young democratic history that began in the mid-1990s, is part of a familiar playbook, perfected in places like Hungary, Venezuela or Nicaragua. First you dress up democratic backsliding in the language of sovereignty and anti-imperialism. Then you make legitimate external scrutiny or opinion illegal. Finally, you use that law selectively,\u00a0\u00e0 la carte, whenever needed.<\/p>\n What counts as \u201cforeign interference\u201d according to this new law? Virtually anything. Policies or statements by a foreign government, or a revoked visa; an editorial, an article or an investigative story by an international media outlet on corruption or violence in Mexico, or even on its internal politics; a social media post by a foreign leader or by a member of the U.S. Congress, the European Parliament or even an international NGO; a UN report on disappearances in Mexico. All of it can now be used as grounds to claim there\u2019s a foreign conspiracy afoot. This bill becomes a blank check, and Morena holds the pen.<\/p>\n The law doesn\u2019t prevent actual foreign interference. It simply hands the government a veto over election outcomes it doesn\u2019t like. And therein lies the problem. The elections body that is set to decide whether \u201cinterference\u201d occurred has been deprived of resources, leadership and autonomy by the previous administration of Andr\u00e9s Manuel L\u00f3pez Obrador, with Morena chipping away at the remaining independence of Mexico\u2019s electoral institutions. Moreover, the electoral referees are now handpicked directly or indirectly by Morena, which seems to be pursuing a return to a single-party hegemonic ruling system like the one Mexico had for 70-plus years in the previous century. Paradoxically, the main allegations of foreign interference in Mexico\u2019s elections came in 2006, when L\u00f3pez Obrador, despite his emphatic\u00a0denials<\/a>, was\u00a0accused<\/a>\u00a0of receiving\u00a0financial support<\/a>\u00a0for his first unsuccessful presidential campaign from then-Venezuelan President Hugo Ch\u00e1vez.<\/p>\n But the gravest irony of all is that the bill is wilfully blind to the real interference plaguing recent Mexican elections\u2014not a foreign government or a foreign media outlet, but organized crime. According to some reports<\/a>, in Mexico\u2019s 2021 midterm elections, criminal organizations, particularly in the northern states of Sinaloa and Tamaulipas, handpicked\u00a0<\/a>candidates, intimidated or whipped voters, and in some cases effectively ran the ballot.\u00a0<\/p>\n That\u2019s what ultimately led this past April to U.S. indictments against 10 current and former public officials in Sinaloa linked to transnational criminal organization based in that state, including the now defenestrated and twice-on-leave governor, one of its federal senators and the mayor of the state\u2019s capital city, Culiac\u00e1n. Morena\u2019s bill has nothing to say about organized crime, not only because that threat doesn\u2019t serve the narrative, but because in some cases, it may be rather too close to home.<\/p>\n The target of the law is obvious enough: the United States, and indeed the Mexico-U.S. bilateral relationship itself. Any comment from Washington, from any governmental or non-state actor\u2014on rule of law, fentanyl, violence and trafficking, press freedom, migration, human rights or a level playing field for U.S. businesses\u2014can now be construed as \u201cinterference\u201d or \u201cintervention.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Internal Morena party dynamics also appear to be at work.\u00a0Public Security Secretary Omar Garc\u00eda Harfuch has overseen intelligence-driven operations, culminating in the takedown of drug kingpin Nemesio Oseguera \u201cEl Mencho.\u201d This tougher line on security has marked Sheinbaum\u2019s clearest and most welcome break from L\u00f3pez Obrador\u2019s much softer approach, and helped ease relations with Washington. However, it has also made Garc\u00eda Harfuch a lightning rod for hardliners within Morena and the former president\u2019s inner circle who see his ascent and collaboration with the United States as a repudiation of the movement\u2019s founding creed and nationalistic stance. (L\u00f3pez Obrador in fact blocked his attempt to become Morena\u2019s candidate for mayor of Mexico City in 2024.) Given that dynamic, the law paradoxically could also be used to try and scupper the secretary\u2019s political ambitions going into the Morena presidential nominating process.\u00a0<\/p>\n And with the United States-Mexico-Canada trade agreement on shaky and unpredictable ground, this law is only likely to deepen chauvinistic and demagogic nationalism, exacerbate tensions and open up greater vulnerabilities in ongoing negotiations.<\/p>\n Since assuming office in 2024, Sheinbaum has prioritized the protection and vindication of her predecessor and mentor\u2019s legacy and stalwarts over the national interest and\u00a0her ability to govern on her own terms.\u00a0That has a cost.\u00a0Indeed, Morenashould not be allowed to achieve what Hungarian sociologist and political theorist Balint Magyar calls \u201cautocratic breakthrough\u201d: the point after which it\u2019s impossible to unseat an autocrat using elections. Mexico deserves better. So does the democratic community that stood by it as it transitioned to a fuller democracy between 1997 and 2018. This bill needs to be challenged\u2014by Mexicans, of course, in the courts and in the streets, but also in the court of international opinion. Silence or turning a blind eye should not be an option.\u00a0<\/p>\n ABOUT THE AUTHOR Reading Time: 4 minutes<\/p>\n Sarukhan is an international consultant based in Washington, D.C. A board member of the Americas Society, he is the former Mexican ambassador to the U.S. (2007-13) and a career diplomat for more than 20 years. He served as Mexican consul general in New York and chief of policy planning at the Mexican foreign ministry, among other posts.<\/p>\n \t\t\tTags: Claudia Sheinbaum<\/a>, Elections<\/a>, Mexico<\/a>\t\t\t<\/p>\n![](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/Arturo-Sarukhan_2.jpeg\"\/)
Arturo Sarukhan<\/p>\n