JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:
The world has never seen an election quite like the one that Mexico will hold on Sunday. Mexicans will elect around 2,600 judges from local magistrates all the way to members of the Supreme Court. It's the first step in a constitutional overhaul that will eventually see voters replacing the entire existing judiciary with people who are directly elected. We call David Mora, a senior analyst at International Crisis Group, to learn more about this giant experiment. Welcome to the program.
DAVID MORA: Hello, Juana. Thank you for having me.
SUMMERS: Thanks for being here. OK, David, this is happening on Sunday. Help us understand how all of this is supposed to work.
MORA: The process has been really controversial so far, you know, who gets to be on the ballots, what names we're going to be able to pick from. And I think part of that is why the turnout is expected to be low. It's also going to be a really complex voting. There's thousands and thousands of candidates. Campaigning has been very limited. So there's little information, and people when they go to the polls, those who actually show up at the polls, they're going to have trouble, you know, waving through all the ballots that they have to pick their candidates from.
SUMMERS: I have to say, just thinking about this from the perspective of voters, it sounds quite complicated. Can you help us understand why Mexico made the decision to change the way the judiciary is selected?
MORA: Right, right, right. So this election, as you mentioned, is a product of this major judicial overhaul that was pushed by the ruling party Morena, former President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador and his successor, now President Claudia Sheinbaum. They are convinced that electing judges is going to make them, you know, more accountable to their constituents and therefore, it's going to decrease corruption within the court system, and then it's going to end Mexico's severe problem of impunity. I think that diagnosis is not entirely wrong. The judiciary did have a problem of corruption, especially in nepotism. Critics, though, they say that you need to understand the constant clashing that former President Lopez Obrador had with the courts throughout his six years in office. You know, he won by a landslide and he controlled both the Senate and the House. So the only effective check and balance on his executive power was the court system.
SUMMERS: Right.
MORA: And in multiple times, the courts stopped his agenda and his reforms, and it became common for him to attack judges and even Supreme Court justices accusing them of corruption and wrongdoing.
SUMMERS: So, obviously, Mexico's Congress agreed with this overhaul, but now that it's actually happening, I do wonder, do the Mexican people that they represent like this, and do they think it will solve the issues with criminals acting with impunity?
MORA: So, actually, I mean, the polls that are available, they show a pretty split opinion on the election, right? Those who are in favor, they do think that this move is going to, you know, bring an end to the major problem of impunity because it's going to - electing the judges, it's going to just create more independent courts. Critics of the election, they see also, like, the possibility of political capture of the entire court system. We have candidates that have clear ties to, you know, politicians and who might be answering to political bosses. Because of this, the critics say that, you know what? We're not making a more independent and solid judiciary. We actually are kind of, like, weakening the judiciary that we used to have.
SUMMERS: I'd love to know a bit more about who's running. Are there many judges that are campaigning for the seats they currently have or are we seeing a lot of newcomers who are sort of streaming in?
MORA: Right. So all the sitting judges were given the opportunity to run for the place that they currently occupy, but hundreds of them decline protesting the reform and the election. The type of people that we see running, I mean, according to media reports, not only candidates with clear political ties, but there are also candidates who are very controversial because they have ties to - alleged ties to organized crime. So, for instance, we have a person that is running who at some point represented former kingpin - now in prison in the United States - El Chapo Guzman. We also have candidates with little to no experience. We have people in their early 20s who just got out of college. We also have candidates who are in the retirement age. There's a candidate, for instance, who's 88 years old, and he's trying to occupy a position.
SUMMERS: So, David, tell us - what will you be watching out for after Sunday's election?
MORA: OK. So first of all, the results are not going to be immediately available, so we're going to have to wait for two weeks to see who was elected. And after that, I think it is going to take months and maybe years to really see the impacts that this election is going to have both, like, positive and negative impacts. Thinking forward to the election in 2027, that is the next round, and we're going to choose another round of judges in two years. And I think it's going to be crucial that we amend all these problems that were documented throughout the process because that is going to make a stronger election.
SUMMERS: David Mora, senior analyst at the International Crisis Group. Thank you so much.
MORA: Thank you, Juana. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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