Mexico's ruling party expands its power in massive judicial election

Washington Post

2 days ago

MEXICO CITY — Mexico's ruling party appears to have gained firm control of the country's Supreme Court, according to the early results of a judicial election that analysts predict will weaken the checks and balances in the young democracy.
The leftist Morena party already dominates Mexico's government, holding the presidency and a majority in Congress. Now, it stands to have far greater influence in the third branch of government, the judiciary.
With 86 percent of the vote counted, it appeared that every single judge on the new, nine-member Supreme Court had featured on lists of recommended candidates distributed to voters by the ruling party.
In addition to the Supreme Court, voters on Sunday chose more than 2,600 other federal and state magistrates, in what amounted to the world's largest judicial election.
Opponents said the election was the latest in a number of steps that have weakened democracy in Mexico, including the abolition of autonomous agencies such as the freedom-of-information institute. If judges have to appeal to voters to reach the bench, critics say, they won't have the same freedom to issue unpopular rulings. And, they could be forced to kowtow to politicians and local power brokers — including drug traffickers.
'This signifies the end of the independence of the judicial branch,' Diego Valadés, a former Supreme Court justice, said in an interview.
Diplomats and legal experts said the election could darken the investment climate in Mexico, since businesspeople can no longer look to the courts to uphold the law impartially.
President Claudia Sheinbaum portrayed it differently. She noted that the judiciary had long been plagued by corruption and nepotism, and said it was best to 'let the people decide' who should preside over the courts.
'Mexico is the most democratic country in the world,' she said after the election on Sunday.
The election was the brainchild of former president Andrés Manuel López Obrador, a left-leaning populist who founded the Morena party. Like President Donald Trump, he railed at court decisions that blocked his initiatives. Before leaving office last year, López Obrador proposed a radical overhaul of the judiciary, which was subsequently approved under Sheinbaum.
While the election was billed as a democratic exercise, many Mexicans said they were confused by the unwieldy process, in which they had to select dozens of judges from multiple ballots with hundreds of names. Only 13 percent of eligible voters turned out.
Many of those who did were mobilized by political parties. The parties handed out folded lists of recommendations known as 'accordions.' Voters were permitted to take them into booths.
The top nine vote-getters for the Supreme Court were all included in the Morena 'accordion.' They include three women who served on the nation's top court in recent years and usually backed López Obrador's decisions, his former legal counselor, and lawyers who worked closely with Morena political figures at the state level, according to the preliminary results.
The top vote-getter was Hugo Aguilar Ortiz, an attorney from the government's National Institute of Indigenous Peoples, who once represented the Zapatista rebels who launched an uprising in 1994.
'This wasn't a free election, but a takeover of the judicial institutions' by Morena, said José Ramón Cossío, a former Supreme Court justice and — along with Valadés — a prominent critic of the former president.
Results of the elections for other federal and state-level judges are expected in coming days.
Candidates were mostly screened and nominated by the legislative and executive branches, in a process criticized as rushed and superficial. Among those who made it onto the ballot were a man who served six years in a Texas jail for drug possession and an attorney who once represented Joaquín 'El Chapo' Guzmán, the Sinaloa cartel drug lord.
Requirements for candidates were minimal compared with the previous civil-service-style system, in which most judges were promoted based on experience and exams. (The Supreme Court was different. Justices were traditionally selected by the Senate from a list submitted by the Mexican president.)
Hundreds of career magistrates chose not to run in this year's election, and many prominent critics boycotted the vote. Some said they feared the election results would take Mexico back to the last century, when the Institutional Revolutionary Party held the presidency for 71 years straight and controlled most of the government.
Mexico isn't the only country where judges are popularly elected. In the United States, numerous states have the practice, but it doesn't apply to federal judges, who are nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate.
Many legal experts agreed that Mexico's justice system was overdue for change. Impunity and corruption are rampant. But some analysts said the election wouldn't solve those problems.
'Only those who have money, power or influence can fully engage with our twisted system of justice,' wrote Ana Laura Magaloni, a legal scholar, in the daily Reforma newspaper. 'Nonetheless, I find it incomprehensible and painful that none of these problems of poor design and functioning of the system are corrected by the judicial reform. In fact, some will get significantly worse.'
Valentina Muñoz Castillo contributed to this report.