Fears of drug cartel influence on judges rise as Mexico looks set to pass contested judicial reform
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00:00Welcome to Apropos, well it's set to usher in a sweeping judicial overhaul
00:07requiring all judges to stand for election. The lower house of Mexico's
00:11Congress has passed contentious legislation which critics say deals a
00:16severe blow to the independence of the judiciary. Mexico's ruling party claims
00:21that judges in the current court system are corrupt. It wants the country's
00:25entire judicial branch, some 7,000 judges, to stand for election. Well the bill is
00:31now headed to the Senate where it is expected to pass by a razor-thin margin.
00:35For the very latest let's cross live now to our correspondent in Mexico City
00:39Yoan Grillo is standing by for us. Yoan good to have you with us this evening.
00:45What exactly firstly is this legislation proposing? Yeah so this is a
00:51constitutional reform of Mexico's justice system which would radically
00:56change it so that first of all the 1,600 or so federal judges and then
01:01eventually all judges in the country, about 7,000, would lose in the short term
01:08their places and these seats would be up for election. They could try and
01:12stand but others would also stand against them. So this would be a changing
01:17of a huge tradition in Mexico. The president Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador
01:22who is behind this constitutional reform says that you know Mexico's justice
01:28system is corrupt, it doesn't work and many of these judges in cases they are
01:32highlighting have been bribed by drug cartels and you've seen many cases of
01:37major drug traffickers walk out of prison, say there's not enough evidence
01:42and so they're saying well we need to change the judges and judges who are up
01:46for popular re-election wouldn't take these kind of decisions because they
01:50have to face the electorate. Many people in Mexico also see the justice system
01:55and the judges as being corrupt and dysfunctional. About 95% of murders in
02:01Mexico are never solved. On the other side the opposition say that this idea
02:07of the corruption is really a smokescreen. What this is really about is
02:12the governing party of the president, Lopez Obrador, Morena party having
02:18control in the elections and basically putting in judges, the 7,000 judges to be
02:23pro-government, pro-Morena judges and they'll kind of rig and push these
02:28elections. They say it won't actually solve the problem of corruption because
02:32you have corruption among elected candidates but it will give the
02:36government control of the judicial system and break the separation of
02:40powers. They say it's really come about because the Supreme Court particularly
02:44has stood in the way of various reforms of the president including the attempt
02:49to put the military in control, effectively a big element of internal
02:54policing and to change the electoral system and this would allow him to do
02:59that. So very very contentious and very deep feelings on both sides about this
03:04reform. Contentious as you say, but it has passed the lower house of
03:07Parliament. How do you expect it to fare in the Senate? Yes, so right now in the
03:13committees of the Senate they are discussing this. They aim to put this on
03:17Sunday before the whole Senate. Now it needs a two-thirds majority to the
03:24constitutional reform but the Morena party has almost two-thirds and it's
03:29believed that it will get a couple of opposition senators to vote for it.
03:35The opposition are saying well this is you know democracy being destroyed.
03:40There's very big, very dramatic language being used here. There's protests by
03:45judicial workers. Not only the judges themselves, many other judicial workers
03:50think that once the judges are changed, everyone will be changed. They're blocking
03:53streets. Many people say this is the end of democracy in Mexico. However it must
03:58be said that Morena party did win the election massively with a huge
04:04big turnout and it won over 60% of votes. They had talked about this before the
04:10elections. It could say they have a mandate to do this. It might be little
04:14for the opposition to do apart from maybe accept this but we'll see in the
04:18coming days what this way. Another fact that's coming is some federal judges
04:22have themselves raised injunctions saying this is inconstitutional and it
04:27creates a very complicated situation. Okay Johan, we'll have to leave it there
04:31for now. Thank you so much for joining us. That's our correspondent in Mexico.
04:33City Johan Grillo. We are staying with this story though and for more we're
04:38joined by Andrea Rivera. She's vice president of Mexico's National Bar
04:43Association. Thank you so much for being with us on the program this evening
04:47Andrea. You specialize in criminal litigation. What exactly is your view of
04:53this new law? So from the legal community we have expressed our concerns regarding
05:00the reform, the proposed amendment and I would like to highlight three specific
05:07points. It was said before that we are worried about the independence of
05:13our judiciary. That's true because although the reform
05:18proposes to have people elect the judges, what it also says is that these
05:24candidates are going to come from political bodies. So the
05:28candidates are going to be coming from the presidency, from Congress and from
05:32the Supreme Court. Two of those bodies, presidency and Congress, are already
05:37under Morena's rule. So we're very worried from the legal
05:44community that they're going to take hold of the judiciary. Now from my
05:49perspective, which I'm, as you said, I'm a criminal attorney, I believe, I mean
05:55judges are supposed to be fair, are supposed to act according to the law and
06:00not to what majorities want them to rule about. I mean, especially regarding
06:06criminal law, most of the country, most of the people, when you know about a case,
06:11you want to see a sanction ruled upon a person. You want to see that person
06:15convicted. So you need a very special person to be able to rule with the law
06:20in their hands and say, hey, even if I'm acting against the majority,
06:26this person has to walk out free. So especially regarding criminal law trials,
06:30I believe judges should not be elected by a popularity contest, but based on
06:36their merits and training. The outgoing president wants citizens to vote on
06:41the election of every single judge. Is that desirable or even feasible? I don't
06:47think it's feasible. I mean, what we've been seeing in past weeks, Congress has
06:53been, when the initiative was presented, was first presented in February from
06:59this year, they said that next year, I mean, in 2025, we were going to have a
07:05general election regarding all judges. Now they are seeing that as completely
07:10impossible. So what the proposed amendment now states is that it's going
07:18to be, you know, step by step. So next year, we're going to have elections if
07:24the initiative goes forward regarding the Supreme Court justices, and maybe in
07:29a couple of years, regarding some other judges and other, you know, top judges
07:38in circuit courts and the like. But I believe they are not taking into
07:43consideration the amount of money this is going to cost and its difficulty in
07:48its implementation. And also, Andrea, with elections being carried out on such a
07:52wide scale, our correspondent touched on it earlier, but how would authorities
07:56guard against drug cartels and criminals fielding their own candidates?
08:03I'm sorry, could you ask the question again? Yeah, just with the elections
08:06being carried out on such a wide scale, how would the authorities guard against
08:10the possibility that drug cartels that are the criminals might actually try to
08:14field their own candidates?
08:16Yeah, that's, that's actually something we're very worried about from the legal
08:20community, because, as well, as you may know, we are a federation, we have
08:25federal judges, but we also have state level judges. And we have federal judges
08:30which are, which are located in specific states and specific circuits, and they
08:36will be able to move from that spot. Now, regarding organized crime, there are
08:41only a few circuits in Mexico which can know, which have jurisdiction to know
08:48about criminal organized crime crimes, no? So only people from those states are
08:54going to be able to elect those judges. So there is a very serious concern
09:00regarding what steps are going to be taken for the organized crime not to be
09:05able to, to manipulate those elections. And those are concerns that have not been
09:11up to this point, resolved. What the President did say, which is actually
09:17another cause of concern, is that he's, he's planning to put these faceless
09:23judges. Faceless judges are these really polemic figures which have appeared in
09:28Italy, but also in Brazil and also in Colombia, in which a person doesn't know
09:33who is the judge who's going to be ruling their cases. So of course,
09:37international courts have been very, have expressed their, their, their
09:43concerns about this point, because you, you, you cannot know who the person is
09:49going to be judging you and you cannot hold it accountable or know if, if, I
09:53mean, if he could have like political, like a conflict of interest of any sort.
09:57And we've been looking at some images of the protests that have been taking
10:00place against this particular legislation. Despite the criticism, the
10:05Mexican President's approval rating remains quite high, but he has had
10:08several clashes with judges over the years, hasn't he?
10:12Yes, he does. Seeing, well, the Supreme Court in the past six years have, has
10:18been working as a true, like, check against the executive power. As, as
10:26there, it was said before, the Supreme Court stopped a lot of the, of the, of
10:32the programs that the President wanted to push through his government. One of
10:37them was putting the, the National Guard in charge of the, of the military. But
10:43we also had the, the Mayan train and tons of all, of other projects which
10:48didn't strictly comply with our constitution. So what he's been doing is
10:53for the last couple of years, he's been giving these speeches early in the
10:58morning against the, the judiciary, but, but like specifically against the
11:03Supreme Court and against the Supreme Court President Justice.
11:07Okay, Andrea, we'll have to leave it there for now. But thank you so much for
11:10joining us. That is Andrea Rivera, Vice President of Mexico's, Mexico's National
11:15Bar Association.
11:17Thank you so much.
11:18Thank you. Well, that is it from us for now. Stay with us, though. We'll be back
11:21shortly with more world news.