Mexico (AP) – The Morena Mexico Party seemed to head towards the control of the Supreme Court, the preliminary votes are distorts of the country’s first legal election noted.
While the votes were still counted for the majority of the 2,600 positions of federal, state and local judge to be won in the judicial elections on Sunday, the results were carried out for the nine positions of the Supreme Court.
The majority of newly elected judges share solid links and ideological alignments with the ruling party, deploying a high court formerly balanced in the hands of the party which revised the judicial system to elect the judges for the first time.
Experts have warned that the change would undermine checks and balances in the Latin American nation: the ruling party would now be about to control the three branches of the government, and President Claudia Sheinbaum and her party would also have an easier way to take their program.
“We look at the power that falls almost entirely in the hands of a party,” said Georgina de la Fuente, specialist in the elections of the Mexican Strateletal consulting company. “There is no power balance.”
A Morena court and native justice
Some of the elections have headed for the elections or former party members. A certain number of them, who were judges of the Supreme Court before the elections, were appointed by former President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, the mentor of Sheinbaum who underwent 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 potential winners were explicitly aligned with Morena. A show was Hugo Aguilar Ortiz, an Aboriginal lawyer from the southern state of Oaxaca. He has no clear affiliation, although Sheinbaum has repeatedly declared that she hoped to have an indigenous judge in the court.
Political controversy
That Morena would emerge from the election with the control of the judiciary What criticisms feared.
The vote came after months of fierce debate, triggered when López Obrador and the Party blocked through reforms So that the judges are elected instead of being appointed according to the merits. The redesign will limit in particular The Supreme Court as a counterweight to the president.
Critics say that legal reform was an attempt to take advantage of the levels of popularity high to stack the courts in favor of the party. Sheinbaum and his mentor insisted that the election of judges would eliminate corruption in a system that most Mexicans are suitable.
“Whoever says that there is authoritarianism in Mexico lies,” said Sheinbaum during the vote. “Mexico is a country that only becomes more free, fair and democratic because it is the will of the people.”
The elections were spoiled by Low participation – approximately 13% – and confusion By voters who have struggled to understand the new voting system, which adversaries quickly hung on as a failure.
The Fuente said that Morena is likely to use her new lack of counterweight in front of the high court to pass reform cycles, including electoral changes.
Early on Tuesday, almost 87% of the ballots had been recorded and the counting continued.
The main candidates of the Supreme Court
– Hugo Aguilar Ortiz was the big surprise of the elections. The Aboriginal lawyer has managed all the voters, including several judges from the Supreme Court in office. He is known as a legal activist fighting for the rights of Aboriginal Mexicans and criticized corruption in the judiciary.
– Lenia Batres was already a judge of the Supreme Court and was appointed by López Obrador. Previously member of the Congress, she is a member of Morena and clearly an ally of the president of Mexico.
– Yasmín Esquivel is a judge of the Supreme Court who was appointed by López Obrador. She concentrated her campaign on the modernization of the judicial system and put pressure for gender equality. She was at the center of a controversy in 2022 when she was accused of plaguring her thesis. She is considered an ally of the Morena party.
– Loretta Ortiz is a judge of the Supreme Court who was appointed by López Obrador. She also sat at the congress and resigned from Morena in 2018 in a demonstration of independence as a judge. Despite this, she is considered an ally of the party.
– María Estela Ríos González is a lawyer who acted as a legal advisor to López Obrador, first when he was mayor of Mexico and later when he became president. She has a long history as a civil servant and works in labor law and on a number of indigenous questions.
– Giovanni Figueroa Mejía is a lawyer for the state of the Pacific Coast of Nayarit with a doctorate in constitutional law. He is currently working as an academic at Iberoamericana University in Mexico City. He worked in human rights. Although he has no clear affiliation, he supported the judicial overhaul put forward by Morena, affirming in an interview with his university that the redesign “was urgent and necessary to rebuild” the judiciary. He said that some of his work in constitutional law had been cited to justify the reform.
– Irving Espinosa Betanzo is a magistrate at the Supreme Court of Mexico City and previously worked as an adviser to the Congress of Morena. He campaigned for the highest court in the country on a platform for eliminating nepotism and corruption and the pursuit of human rights.
– Arístides Rodrigo Guerrero García is a law professor who puts pressure on social well-being without any experience as a judge, but who worked as a civil servant and has experience in constitutional and parliamentary law. He gained ground in campaigns for a video on social networks to tell him that he is “more prepared than a pork crust”.
– Sara Irene Herrerías Guerra is a prosecutor specializing in human rights for the office of the Attorney General of Mexico. She worked on questions such as gender equality, sexually transmitted infections and the trafficking of human beings. In 2023, she worked on The investigation into a fire in an immigration establishment In the border town of Ciudad Juárez who killed 40 migrants.
