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.
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