President Sheinbaum labels the vote a ‘success’, but experts warn criminals could use it to infiltrate the judiciary. A landmark vote to select judges in Mexico has been labelled a “success” by the president despite a sparse turnout and widespread confusion.
Only 13 per cent of eligible voters participated in Sunday’s election to renovate the judicial system. While President Claudia Sheinbaum announced during a campaign rally that this election would make Mexico more democratic, critics contended she was pushing for power to take control of the judiciary while analysts feared that it might open the door to crime seeping into influence-making.
The election, a bedrock policy of Sheinbaum and predecessor Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, sought to fill around 880 federal judge posts, including Supreme Court judges, along with hundreds of magistrates and local judges.
However, most voters reported they found themselves unable to make an educated decision among a deluge of largely unfamiliar candidates, who were prohibited from openly stating party affiliations or indulging in mass canvassing.
On what the government had set out to be a historic day, most Mexicans would rather do something else,” he stated. Nevertheless, Sheinbaum celebrated the election as “a complete success” that positions the country as a democratic pioneer.
“Mexico is a nation that is becoming increasingly free, just and democratic because that is the people’s will,” the president declared.
The reform, which has been defended by its proponents as a means of purifying a corrupt legal system, was first advocated by Sheinbaum’s predecessor, Lopez Obrador, who repeatedly battled the vestigial judiciary.
Experts had predicted that votes would be inordinately low because of the sheer number of candidates and the novelty of judicial elections.
To be well-informed, voters “would have to spend hours and hours reading up on the record and the backgrounds of each of the hundreds of candidates”, said David Shirk, a professor at the University of San Diego.
That was a worry expressed by voters at the voting booths. We are not very prepared,” said Lucia Calderon, a 63-year-old university instructor. “I think we need more information.”
Francisco Torres de Leon, a retired school teacher aged 62 from southern Mexico, described the process as “painstaking because they have too many candidates and positions that they’re going to fill.”.
