Mexico City – Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum was effusive. “Wonderful, impressive,” he told journalists on Monday. “Extraordinary … a great success.”
The superlatives followed by Sunday's historical judicial elections, which Sheinbaum defended, but the president could not hide a harsh reality: only about 13% of the 100 million eligible voters issued a vote in a vote that the president had described a key component of the continuous “transformation” of the ruling party of Mexican society. She and her allies had spent weeks urging people to vote.
No one expected Sunday's surveys, which did not include contenders for any national or state legislative position, addressed 61% of last year's national elections. Sheinbaum won an overwhelming victory last year, and her political block of Morena swept great majorities in both Congress cameras and in state houses and cities throughout the country.
This was a festival of electoral fraud, and dare to say that people govern.
– Jorge Romero, national leader of the National Party of Action
Participation was more disappointing than even lower pre -electoral participation estimates of approximately 15%. Some electoral defenders had optimistically predicted that up to a third of the voters would reach the surveys.
“Everything can be perfected,” admitted the president.
The lack of participation, experts said, can be attributed to many factors: it was an out of the year; The voting process was new and extremely complicated; The vast majority of the more than 7,000 contestants for 881 federal judge positions, and for another 1,800 state jurist positions, were unknown.
The election, while the creation of former President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, the founder of Morena and Sheinbaum's mentor, was apparently non -partisan. The possible judges were not identified by political affiliation and were forbidden to receive party funds. There were no massive demonstrations or advertising bombings in a contest that will be developed largely on social networks.
And it was the first time that Mexico voted for the judges, who have historically been appointed by expert panels or, in the case of the Supreme Court, the President. Mexico becomes the first nation in the world with a Judicial Power all elected.
“The task was very intensive in time for voters, who had to learn about a scandalous number of candidates,” said Kenneth F. Greene, a government professor at the University of Texas in Austin. “No one could learn about all of them.”
However, many political observers considered that the low participation of Sunday was a shameful setback for a party that had seemed almost invincible in its extraordinary march towards power since its emergence less than a decade ago.
Government opponents delighted in a rare opportunity to make fun of the legendary electoral skill of Morena, labeling the vote “Domingo Negro” and the end of judicial independence and the system of controls and balances of Mexico.
“This was a festival of electoral fraud, and they dare to say that people govern,” said Jorge Romero, national leader of the National Party of Action Center-Right, at a press conference that presented images of empty voting positions and testimonies of citizens who did not know what candidates vote.
When writing in the newspaper Reforma, the columnist Denise Dresser Archly compared the elections with a gala planned for a long time that nobody attends.
“They left the carpet, sent the invitations, mounted the chairs, designed the menu, [and] Hired with Mariachis, “Dresser wrote.” And, in the end, they were alone. “
All complaints and low participation will make any difference in the final composition of the Judiciary? Many experts say no, despite the vote of the opposition to present a complaint to the organization of US states, a measure that may be more symbolic than substantial.
The final results will not be known for one or two weeks. But in the end, it seems likely to keep the official count, and pro-movie judges will take their seats in a system that Sheinbaum has assaulted as corrupt and full of nepotism.
“I was always going to reinforce Morena and give President Sheinbaum even more power than he already has,” said Greene, who was in Mexico City to observe the voting process. “My strong assumption is that Sheinbaum now dominates the three branches of the government and is essentially able to approve any constitutional law and reforms that I want. We are seeing a tremendous concentration of power in the presidency.”
The most observed race is for the composition of the new Supreme Court, which will have fewer judges, nine, instead of the current 11, and less authority to challenge legislative and presidential decisions. Only three sitting members chose to run for a position. The three were appointed by López Obrador, who faced each other repeatedly with the judges about their strong efforts to reform the electoral law and other initiatives.
It remains to be seen if the new judges of Mexico will be an improvement on the current judiciary. Many Mexicans clearly agree with the president's claims that the Judicial System of Mexico needed a review.
But the judges are only part of a justice system that has many defects. Without touching in the judicial reform there were other entities, especially the offices of the District Prosecutor and the Local Police, both notoriously corrupt.
Both Sheinbaum and his predecessor have resorted to the National Guard and the Agency for the Application of the Law of the Nation. But the National Guard troops have been involved in several recent scandals, including the murder of civilians and gasoline trafficking in the black market.
The election “was a political humiliation,” wrote Alejandro Monsivis-Carrillo, a political scientist from El Colegio de la Frontera Norte, in X. “But it doesn't matter much: the control of the party of the public powers advances without withdrawal.”
The special correspondent Cecilia Sánchez Vidal contributed.
