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.

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