Mexico held unprecedented elections yesterday allowing voters to choose their judges at all levels, in a country where drug cartels and other vested interests regularly seek to alter the course of justice.
The Mexican government said the reform making Mexico the world’s only country to select all its judges and magistrates by popular vote is needed to tackle deep-rooted corruption and impunity.
However, there are concerns that the judiciary would be politicized and that it would become easier for criminals to influence the courts with threats and bribery.
Photo: Reuters
While corruption is already an issue, “there is reason to believe that elections may be more easily infiltrated by organized crime than other methods of judicial selection,” said Margaret Satterthwaite, the UN special rapporteur on the independence of judges and lawyers.
Judicial elections also “entail a risk that the electorate will not choose candidates based on their merit,” the independent expert said.
The run-up to the vote has not been accompanied by the kind of violence that often targets politicians in Mexico.
However, cartels are likely trying to influence the outcome in the shadows, said Luis Carlos Ugalde, a consultant and former head of Mexico’s electoral commission.
“It is logical that organized criminal groups would have approached judges and candidates who are important to them,” Ugalde told a roundtable hosted by the Inter-American Dialogue.
Carlota Ramos, a lawyer in the office of Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum, said that while the risk of organized crime infiltrating state institutions was real, it had already been present and “invisible.”
The new system allowed greater scrutiny of aspiring judges, Ramos said.
Rights group Defensorxs has identified about 20 candidates it considers “high risk,” including Silvia Delgado, a former lawyer for Sinaloa Cartel cofounder Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman.
“Every person has the right to counsel,” Delgado, who is standing to be a judge in the northern state of Chihuahua, said.
Fernando Escamilla, who is seeking to be a judge in the northern state of Nuevo Leon, was a lawyer for Miguel Angel Trevino, a former leader of the Los Zetas cartel, renowned for its brutality.
Another aspiring judge, in Durango state, spent almost six years in prison in the US for drug crimes.
“I’ve never sold myself to you as the perfect candidate,” Leopoldo Chavez said in a video.
Yesterday, voters were to choose about 880 federal judges — including Mexican Supreme Court justices — as well as hundreds of local judges and magistrates. Another election for the remainder is to be held in 2027.
Candidates are supposed to have a law degree, experience in legal affairs and what is termed “a good reputation,” as well as no criminal record.
‘HYANGDO’: A South Korean lawmaker said there was no credible evidence to support rumors that Kim Jong-un has a son with a disability or who is studying abroad South Korea’s spy agency yesterday said that North Korean leader Kim Jong-un’s daughter, Kim Ju-ae, who last week accompanied him on a high-profile visit to Beijing, is understood to be his recognized successor. The teenager drew global attention when she made her first official overseas trip with her father, as he met with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) and Russian President Vladimir Putin. Analysts have long seen her as Kim’s likely successor, although some have suggested she has an older brother who is being secretly groomed as the next leader. The South Korean National Intelligence Service (NIS) “assesses that she [Kim Ju-ae]
In the week before his fatal shooting, right-wing US political activist Charlie Kirk cheered the boom of conservative young men in South Korea and warned about a “globalist menace” in Tokyo on his first speaking tour of Asia. Kirk, 31, who helped amplify US President Donald Trump’s agenda to young voters with often inflammatory rhetoric focused on issues such as gender and immigration, was shot in the neck on Wednesday at a speaking event at a Utah university. In Seoul on Friday last week, he spoke about how he “brought Trump to victory,” while addressing Build Up Korea 2025, a conservative conference
DEADLOCK: Putin has vowed to continue fighting unless Ukraine cedes more land, while talks have been paused with no immediate results expected, the Kremlin said Russia on Friday said that peace talks with Kyiv were on “pause” as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy warned that Russian President Vladimir Putin still wanted to capture the whole of Ukraine. Meanwhile, US President Donald Trump said that he was running out of patience with Putin, and the NATO alliance said it would bolster its eastern front after Russian drones were shot down in Polish airspace this week. The latest blow to faltering diplomacy came as Russia’s army staged major military drills with its key ally Belarus. Despite Trump forcing the warring sides to hold direct talks and hosting Putin in Alaska, there
North Korea has executed people for watching or distributing foreign television shows, including popular South Korean dramas, as part of an intensifying crackdown on personal freedoms, a UN human rights report said on Friday. Surveillance has grown more pervasive since 2014 with the help of new technologies, while punishments have become harsher — including the introduction of the death penalty for offences such as sharing foreign TV dramas, the report said. The curbs make North Korea the most restrictive country in the world, said the 14-page UN report, which was based on interviews with more than 300 witnesses and victims who had
RSS