SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
A reform that would completely remake Mexico's judiciary by electing all judges is being speedily passed. The measure's popular. It's supported by the president. But judicial experts in Mexico and around the world say it's a terrible idea. NPR's Eyder Peralta joins us now from Mexico City. Eyder, thanks for being with us.
EYDER PERALTA, BYLINE: Hey, there, Scott.
SIMON: This is a constitutional amendment that would allow the entire judiciary, including the Supreme Court, to be elected.
PERALTA: That's right. I mean, and this is a big change. This is as epic a fight as it gets between the branches of governments. And just a bit of background before we get into the details of it - all of this is happening because President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador and his party won huge these past elections. They won the presidency. They won a supermajority in Congress. And one of the things that they ran on was this judicial reform.
And so now, the legislative branch and the executive branch are taking on the judicial branch. One of the big changes they want to make, as you mentioned, is that federal judges of all stripes, from the Supreme Court all the way down to the district courts, would no longer be appointed. Instead, they would be directly elected by the people.
President Lopez Obrador and incoming president, Claudia Sheinbaum, say that this would deal with corruption in the federal courts, that this would make judges accountable to the Mexican people and not big business or special interests or organized crime. They say that this will put an end to nepotism, and that is rampant in the federal judiciary. And it is worth noting that the polls show that Mexicans, by and large, support this reform.
SIMON: I mean, electing all judges - democracy - to fight corruption doesn't sound like a drawback. What's the issue?
PERALTA: I mean, on the surface, it doesn't sound like a drawback, right? But the vast majority of legal scholars and academics and intellectuals say that this isn't just a bad idea. They say it's a terrible one. The International Association of Judges, which represents judges in some 90 countries, put out an analysis of the proposed reform. And they said, please don't do this, Mexico. The U.S., Canada, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Human Rights Watch - they've all said this is a bad idea.
I spoke to Julio Rios, who studies judiciaries at the ITAM, the Autonomous Technological Institute, here in Mexico. And he says, this has only been tried at the federal level in Bolivia, and it did not end corruption. Instead, it opened up the judiciary to the whims of politics.
JULIO RIOS: The people in government respond to a specific electoral mandate, and they are going to be held accountable in the next election based on that electoral mandate. But judges should be looking at the longer voter horizon. They are in charge of enforcing the constitution over the laws and the governments that come and go.
PERALTA: And what's more, he says that this reform would end career civil service in the judiciary. Right now, Mexicans have to work their way up. They have to learn the ropes in some lower-level jobs before they become federal judges. And that would end with this reform.
SIMON: How do judges feel?
PERALTA: They're on strike. They're not working in opposition to this reform. And the president of Mexico's Supreme Court, Norma Pina, has essentially said this is all a power struggle. She says, the president of Mexico is angry that some of his big legislative proposals have been found unconstitutional. And she says that this came to a head when the federal courts in Mexico said he couldn't put the National Guard under military command.
And what the court said here is that this huge security force, which the president had created and deployed across the country, had to be run under civilian control. She says, once that decision was made, the president decided that the only way forward was to destroy the judiciary.
But you know, it's worth pausing on that. Some analysts I've spoken to say they don't really believe that this reform will completely destroy Mexico's judicial independence. They point out, for example, that there's still an opposition in the country, and that they could very well vote for judges that could balance out the legislative and executive branches.
SIMON: And the vote's in a few days, right?
PERALTA: Well, it might be in a few days. The new Congress takes power September 1, and that's tomorrow. This piece of legislation will be its first order of business. If the ruling party has its way, they say that this should be the law of the land by, latest, mid-September.
SIMON: NPR's Eyder Peralta, thanks so much.
PERALTA: Thank you, Scott. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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