Mexico’s first judicial election lightens disputes and confusion between voters

Mexico is holding its first judicial election on Sunday, still struggling to understand a process to change the country’s court system by shaking the dispute and sowing confusion among voters. Mexico’s ruling party, Morena, abolished the court system later last year, promoted protests and criticism that reform is an effort by those who are in power to seize their political popularity to gain control of the government branch. “This is an attempt to control the court system, which is a type of fork in favor of those in power”, said Lawrence Petin, director of Juiceo Justo, a legal organization in Mexico. “But it is a counter-balance, which is present in every healthy democracy.” Now, instead of appointing judges on a system of qualification and experience, Mexican voters will choose between some 7,700 candidates who die for more than 2,600 judicial positions. Mexico president Claudia Shinboum and party colleagues have said that elections are a way to purify the court system of corruption in a country that has faced high -level impurities for a long time. Critics say that votes can harm democracy and open the judicial system for organized crime and other corrupt actors, who are expecting to hold power. This process has become more chaotic in the run-up for vote only. Civil society organizations such as Defenseox have raised red flags about a series of candidates running for the election, including lawyers, who represented some of Mexico’s most frightened cartel leaders and local authorities, who were forced to resign from their positions due to corruption scams. In addition, those who put forward themselves have been imprisoned for drug trafficking in the United States for years and have a slate of candidates with relationships with a religious group, whose spiritual leader is behind bars in California, who is convicted after convicting minors for sexual harassment. At the same time, voters have been confused by a polling process that Petin has warned that it has been thrown together in a hurry. Voters often have to choose from more than a hundred candidates, who are not allowed to make their party affiliation clearly voicing or widely publicized. As a result, many Mexican say they are going to vote blind. The Election Authority of Mexico has investigated voter guides across the country, saying that critics say that political parties are a clear step to stack the vote in their favor. “Political parties were not just going to sit with their arms,” ​​said Petin. The 78 -year -old former construction worker, Miguel Garcia, stood before the Supreme Court of the country on Friday, standing in front of the voter guide with the face of the voter guide and the candidates. He was scribbing his name fiercely on a small scrap of paper and said that he had traveled in Mexico City to try to inform himself before the vote, but he had no information other than outside the courtyard. “Where I live in the neighborhood, there is no information for us,” he said. “I am confused, because they are asking us to go out and vote, but we don’t know who to vote.”