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The Guardian
02-06-2025
- Business
- The Guardian
Record low turnout in Mexican judicial vote but president hails ‘complete success'
Mexico's president Claudia Sheinbaum has defended the country's unprecedented judicial elections after just 13% of Mexicans turned out to vote, a record low in a federal election. Roughly 2,600 posts, from local magistrates to supreme court justices, were up for grabs on Sunday, as an entire judicial system was put to the vote for the first time in the world. Despite the low turnout, Sheinbaum described the process as 'a complete success', adding: 'Mexico is the most democratic country in the world.' The vote was the result of a radical reform by the governing Morena party, which said it would reduce corruption and impunity in the judicial system by making it more responsive to popular opinion. But the concept was challenged by critics who said it would bulldoze the separation of powers and could flood the judicial system with candidates who were under-qualified and aligned with political interests. The National Electoral Institute had to design and implement the unprecedented and seismically important election in a matter of months. Given the sheer number of positions and candidates involved, critics had warned that a low turnout was likely. Parts of the opposition also called for a boycott. Still, the estimated 13% turnout is far below the more than 60% that tends to turn out for presidential elections, and also lower than any other federal vote in Mexico's democratic history. Once blank and spoiled ballots are taken into account, the effective vote could be still lower. The opposition, which has been unable to find a response to Morena's electoral machine since former president Andrés Manuel López Obrador first led it to power in 2018, seized on the low turnout to criticise the reform. 'As we said from the beginning: the election of the judiciary was an absolute failure,' said Ricardo Anaya, a former presidential candidate from the conservative PAN party. 'What we saw was a simulation, a fraud and a mess. Empty ballot boxes, ballots marked prematurely, and citizens who did not even know who they were voting for. This is not democracy. It is an insult.' However, there is no minimum turnout required to formally legitimise an election in Mexico. The vote count is expected to be protracted, and results will drip in over the next two weeks. Low turnout favours the clientelistic vote, and there was evidence of illegal party interference in the elections through the distribution of cheat sheets largely with the names of the government's favoured candidates. Many of these sheets focused on the supreme court, which has often acted as a check on Morena's executive power, and a new disciplinary tribune, which will keep judges in line. Other interests – including organised crime groups – may also have managed to place their own favoured candidates by mobilising voters. Over the coming weeks, experts will scrutinise the results to discern which interests have emerged with more and less influence in Mexico's courts. The new judges will take their seats in a transformed judicial system in September. 'Yesterday's turnout at the polls met expectations,' said Sheinbaum. 'It was an innovative process that generated interest among the participants.' 'Everything can be perfected,' added Sheinbaum, looking ahead to the second round of judicial elections in which another 1,000 judges will be chosen. 'We will draw conclusions from yesterday to make improvements for 2027.'
Khaleej Times
02-06-2025
- General
- Khaleej Times
Low turnout marks Mexico's unique vote for judges held under shadow of crime
Mexico's president hailed the country's unprecedented elections for judges a success even though only around 13 per cent of eligible voters turned out for a poll that sharply divided opinion. With Mexico plagued by rampant crime, corruption and impunity, the government and its supporters argued that the reform making Mexico the only country in the world to select all of its judges and magistrates by popular vote was needed to clean up a rotten justice system. Turnout in Sunday's polls hovered between just 12.57 and 13.32 per cent of the nearly 100 million eligible voters, National Electoral Institute head Guadalupe Taddei said in a televised statement. Despite that low turnout, President Claudia Sheinbaum praised the unique exercise as a "complete success." "For the first time in history, almost 13 million Mexican women and men exercised their right to decide the new ministers, magistrates and judges," Sheinbaum said in a video message posted to social media. She insisted on the eve of the vote that only those who "want the regime of corruption and privileges" to continue were against it. Voters were tasked with selecting around 880 federal judges, including Supreme Court justices, as well as hundreds of local judges and magistrates. Another election for the remainder will be held in 2027. Sheinbaum had defended the judicial reforms but critics feared the elections would politicise the justice system and make it easier for criminals to influence the courts with threats and bribery. Arturo Giesemann, a 57-year-old retiree, said his main motivation for voting was "the disgust I have with the current judiciary because of its corruption." Many voters struggled to choose from such a large list of largely unknown candidates. "We are not very prepared," said Lucia Calderon, a 63-year-old university teacher. "I think we need more information." In the western state of Jalisco, 63-year-old housewife Maria Estrada said she used her "intuition" because she did not know the candidates. While corruption already exists, "there is reason to believe that elections may be more easily infiltrated by organised crime than other methods of judicial selection," Margaret Satterthwaite, the United Nations special rapporteur on the independence of judges and lawyers, told AFP. Hundreds of opponents of the reforms marched through Mexico City waving flags and banners with slogans including: "Hands off our democracy" and "No to electoral fraud." The elections send the judiciary "to its grave," said Ismael Novela, a 58-year-old company worker. "It was the last counterweight we had against the totalitarianism of the executive branch." The run-up to the vote was not accompanied by the kind of violence that often targets politicians in Mexico. However, "it is logical that organised criminal groups would have approached judges and candidates who are important to them," said consultant Luis Carlos Ugalde, a former head of Mexico's electoral commission. Rights group Defensorxs has identified around 20 candidates it considers "high risk," including Silvia Delgado, a former lawyer for Sinaloa Cartel co-founder Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman. Another aspiring judge, in Durango state, spent almost six years in prison in the United States for drug crimes. Candidates were supposed to have a law degree, experience in legal affairs and what is termed "a good reputation," as well as no criminal record in Mexico. To do a good job, voters "would have to spend hours and hours researching the track record and the profiles of each of the hundreds of candidates," said David Shirk, a professor at the University of San Diego. He believes that most of the corruption in Mexico's judicial system is in law enforcement agencies and public prosecutors' offices. "If you can avoid being prosecuted, you don't have to worry about the judge," said Shirk, who heads the Justice in Mexico research project. The judicial reforms were championed by Sheinbaum's predecessor and mentor Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, who frequently clashed with the courts before stepping down last year. The main reason for the elections seems to be "because Lopez Obrador had a grudge against the judges," Shirk said.
