Mexico's Judicial Election Puts Spotlight on Former President's Son
MEXICO CITY—Former Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador set the stage for Sunday's unprecedented election to choose judges and Supreme Court justices. He left it to his son to pull it off.
Andrés Manuel López Beltrán, operations chief of the ruling Morena party that his father founded, oversaw the political machine that mobilized millions of working-class voters to participate in Sunday's novel election. Voters across the country cast ballots in nearly 2,700 judicial races including the nine seats on Mexico's Supreme Court, becoming the world's first country where all judges will be directly elected.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Politico
an hour ago
- Politico
Mexico's ruling party headed toward control of newly elected Supreme Court, vote tallies show
MEXICO CITY — Mexico's ruling Morena party appeared to be heading toward control over the Supreme Court, preliminary vote tallies of the country's first judicial election indicated. While votes were still being counted Tuesday for the majority of the 2,600 federal, state and local judge positions up for grabs in Sunday's elections, results rolled in for the nine Supreme Court positions. The majority of the newly elected justices share strong ties and ideological alignments with the ruling party, shifting a once fairly balanced high court into the hands of the very party that overhauled the judicial system to elect judges for the first time. Experts warned the shift would undercut checks and balances in the Latin American nation: The governing party would now be close to controlling all three branches of government, and President Claudia Sheinbaum and her party would have an easier path to push through their agenda. 'We're watching as power is falling almost entirely into the hands of one party,' said Georgina De la Fuente, election specialist with the Mexican consulting firm Strategia Electoral. 'There isn't any balance of power.' Despite that, officials have continued to fiercely reject democratic concerns. Some of those headed toward election were members or former members of the party. A number of them, who were Supreme Court justices prior to the election, were appointed by former President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, Sheinbaum's mentor who pushed through the judicial overhaul last year. Others were advisers to the president or the party or campaigned with politically aligned visions for the judiciary. Not all of the prospective winners were explicitly aligned with Morena. One standout was Hugo Aguilar Ortiz, an Indigenous lawyer from the southern state of Oaxaca. He has no clear party affiliation, though Sheinbaum said repeatedly she hoped to have an Indigenous judge on the court and said on Tuesday she was happy to see he would be. Critics had feared that Morena would emerge from the election with control of the judiciary. The vote came after months of fierce debate, prompted when López Obrador and the party jammed through the reforms for judges to be elected instead of being appointed based on merits. The overhaul will notably limit the Supreme Court as a counterweight to the president. Judges, experts and political opposition say the reform was an attempt to take advantage of high popularity levels to stack courts in favor of Morena. Sheinbaum and her mentor have insisted that electing judges will root out corruption in a system most Mexicans agree is broken. On Tuesday, Sheinbaum brushed off complaints by Mexico's opposition – which called for a boycott of the vote – that the Supreme Court was now unfairly stacked against them, saying 'they're the ones who decided not to participate in the election.' The elections were marred by low participation — about 13% — and confusion by voters who struggled to understand the new system, something opponents quickly latched onto as a failure. De la Fuente said Morena is likely to use its new lack of counterweight in the high court to push through rounds of reforms, including reforms to Mexico's electoral systems, a proposal that has stirred controversy and was previously blocked by courts. Guadalupe Taddei Zavala, chief counselor of Mexico's electoral authority, on Tuesday rejected democratic concerns. 'I don't see any (constitutional) crisis after the election,' she said. As of Tuesday afternoon, more than 93% of the ballots had been tallied.
CNN
an hour ago
- CNN
Chile prosecutes individuals alleged to have stolen babies
It's a dark chapter in Chile's history. During the dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet from 1973 to 1990, thousands of babies were stolen from their biological mothers and sold into adoption, mainly to foreign couples from the United States and Europe. In Chile, they're known as 'The Children of Silence.' And now, for the first time in the country's history, a Chilean judge announced he was prosecuting individuals alleged to have stolen babies in the country. Alejandro Aguilar Brevis, a Santiago Court of Appeals judge in charge of the investigation 'determined that in the 1980s' there was a network of health officials, Catholic priests, attorneys, social workers and even a judge who detected and delivered stole babies from mainly impoverished mothers and sold them into adoption to foreign couples for as much as $50,000, according to a Monday press release by Chile's judiciary. The investigation, which focuses on the city of San Fernando in central Chile, involves two babies who were stolen and handed over to foreign couples, according to the judiciary statement. According to the statement by Chile's judiciary, the ring allegedly focused on 'abducting or stealing infants for monetary gain' with the purpose of 'taking them out of the country to different destinations in Europe and the US.' The judge charged and issued arrest warrants for five people, who he said should remain in pre-trial detention for 'criminal association, child abduction, and willful misconduct,' the release said. The Chilean government has made an extradition request to Israel for a former Chilean family court judge who now lives there and was allegedly involved, the release added. CNN contacted the judiciary to determine if those involved have legal representation and how they respond to the allegations, but there has been no response so far. The judge ruled that the statute of limitations does not apply in this case because as 'these are crimes against humanity committed under a military regime and must be punished in accordance with the American Convention on Human Rights and the jurisprudence of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights.' The investigation was announced Monday, one day after Chilean President Gabriel Boric said that a task force he created last year to investigate cases of stolen babies has issued its final report. Following its recommendations, Boric said the Chilean government will 'create a genetic fingerprint bank that will provide additional means of searching for origins and enable family reunification for the many babies who were stolen for so long and given to foreign families.' Constanza del Río, founder and director of Nos Buscamos (We Are Looking for Each Other), a Santiago NGO dedicated to reuniting families of stolen babies said that she feels cautiously optimistic because actions by countries like Chile to find the truth about the stolen babies have been 'very slow and something that revictimizes the victims.' Del Río, herself a victim of an illegal adoption, filed a lawsuit in 2017 demanding an investigation by the Chilean government. Authorities named a special prosecutor, but the investigation went nowhere, she said. Another prosecutor took the case for five years only to declare last year that he hadn't been able 'to establish that any crimes have been committed,' according to Del Rio. President Boric has said creating a task force proves his government is serious about the issue and has spoken publicly about it, recognizing the systematic theft of babies back then as a fact. There could be tens of thousands of cases. The theft of thousands of babies in Chile has been documented for over a decade by non-governmental organizations. Since 2014, CNN has reported about multiple cases where people stolen as babies have reunited with their biological mothers after DNA tests proved they were, in fact, related. Constanza del Río says Nos Buscamos alone has built a database that includes about 9,000 cases and has helped reunite more than 600 parents with their stolen children. Ten years ago, Marcela Labraña, the then-director of the country's child protection agency (SENAME, by its Spanish acronym), told CNN her agency was investigating hundreds of cases but suspected there could be thousands more. 'This is no longer a myth. We know nowadays that this happened, and it was real. It's not a tale that a couple of people were telling,' Labraña said at the time. CNN's Cristopher Ulloa contributed reporting.
Yahoo
2 hours ago
- Yahoo
Mexico's ruling party expands power in Supreme Court after elections marred by low turnout
Mexico's ruling party Morena will gain control of the Supreme Court following the country's first-ever judicial elections, which were marred by low voter turnout and allegations of a power grab. Preliminary results from Sunday's race showed candidates linked with Morena winning most seats on the judiciary. With the victory, the party will now have a firm grip over every branch of government, a change that democracy advocates say weakens the country's checks and balances. Critics have also warned that the election itself poses a risk to democracy, arguing that by having judges elected through popular vote, the independent authority of the courts could be compromised, and with it, their ability to uphold the law and keep other powers in check at a time of rampant crime and corruption. Around 100 million citizens were eligible to participate in Sunday's event, but only about 13% showed up to vote. Experts say the figures reflected confusion among voters who were overwhelmed by the large number of positions and candidates to choose from. Víctor Manuel Alarcón Olguín, a research professor at the university UAM-Iztapalapa who focuses on political parties and elections, also faulted the way the process was designed. He said legislators 'did not provide the electoral authority with a sufficiently well-defined method, and the electoral authority had to resolve many of these technical problems on the fly in order, at least, to try to make this system work.' Among the nine projected winners in the Supreme Court race are three sitting justices who had been nominated by former President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, the founder of Morena. Others include a former legal adviser to López Obrador, the current human rights prosecutor of the Attorney General's Office, and an indigenous lawyer who is expected to become the court's next president. 'Many of these people, at best, do not show an affiliation or such an obvious participation with the ruling party, but they do have very diverse interests or connections, or at least ideological or manifest affinities, let's say, in terms of their profiles and professional activities that place them in a circle very close to the government,' said Alarcón Olguín. All nine candidates appeared in pamphlets that Morena members were accused of handing out to voters to suggest which candidates they should vote for. Election rules prohibit political parties from promoting or supporting judicial candidates. Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum, the leader of Morena, has tried to distance herself from the pamphlets, condemning their use and calling for an investigation into the matter. Sunday's race marked the first time any country has held elections at every level of the judiciary. Almost 900 federal posts were in play, including all nine seats on the Supreme Court, as well as some 1,800 local positions in 19 states. Votes are still being counted across the country, with results expected to be announced gradually over the next week. A second vote for hundreds of other judicial positions will be held in 2027. Sheinbaum labeled Sunday's election a success. 'In Mexico, voting is voluntary. It is not mandatory. There are countries where it is mandatory, but not here — here it is free, direct, universal, and secret. So, 13 million people decided to vote in an exercise for the judiciary. That is very good,' she said. Lopez Obrador and his party approved the judicial election in September, arguing that a popular vote would help stem corruption and impunity within the courts. But critics say Morena was seizing on its popularity to get like-minded justices elected, with the goal of passing through reforms that the previous, more-balanced courts had blocked. They also fear that the vote could be influenced by political actors and criminal groups. Eight justices on the then-11-seat Supreme Court announced their resignations in October, declining to participate in Sunday's election. Most resignations are effective August 31, 2025, a day before the new court is set to begin.
