The transcript of this episode can be accessed by clicking the “Transcript” button below the title. All other episodes are here.
Luke talks with Lic. Alfredo Villalpando, a student of Mexican political life, and Dr. Sami Tapio Tenoch Laaksonen, a political activist and journalist, about Mexico’s June 1st judicial elections. Alfredo and Sami were on the podcast in February for a more general discussion of Mexican politics. Luke recently spoke with Mariano Guevara about the elections. Other articles (here, here, here) have discussed the Morena and changes to the judiciary.
This episode is in Spanish. An abridged translation in English is below.
Luke: Hello, everyone, and welcome to another episode of the Democratic Constitution Podcast. I'm very excited to talk with Alfredo and Sami again. We're going to talk about the judicial elections in Mexico. What’s happening in preparation for the elections?
Sami: Good afternoon, and it's a pleasure to be with you again, Luke. My name is Dr. Sami Tapio Tenoch Laaksonen. I'm a professor and journalist. I've been reporting on Latin America since around 2008. I've lived in Mexico since 2003 and was born in Finland. I’ve been supporting the Fourth Transformation (4T) since its inception, and I’ve been with Morena since 2014 and with López Obrador since the silent march against his impeachment in 2005.
Many things are happening in preparation for the elections. I'd say we're already executing Plan C. There was Plan A, which was rejected, then Plan B, which didn't have a qualified majority, and then López Obrador launched Plan C, which was to renew the judiciary. The campaigns for judicial elections began on March 30th, and now we're two weeks away from the elections, some of the most complex in world history. Each voter will get six ballots, and here in Mexico City, they will get three additional local ones. We're experiencing a new democratic model, and the challenge is to bring this message to the people and get them to participate. So, right now, the goal is to reach at least 20 million votes.
Alfredo: Hello again, Luke and Sami. I'm very pleased to be with you. Congratulations, Luke, for continuing to do episodes in Spanish. I'm Alfredo Villalpando. I'm a lawyer, and I've been an electoral official all my life. I'm passionate about national and international politics. I believe that what we're going to experience in Mexico, and what we're already experiencing, is something unprecedented in the world: the election of the judiciary by popular vote. There are some other countries, like Bolivia, certain states in the United States, and certain areas of Japan, where there are partial elections for the judiciary. But what we're doing in Mexico is unprecedented.
It's a very important election that presents many challenges and many doubts. We don't know yet what the result will be, but it’s clear to me that it’s something permanent. I also do not doubt that it will gradually be replicated in other countries around the world.
L: What’s the opposition to the elections, and who is in the opposition?
S: One could also ask, what's the need to change the judiciary? This current system comes from Ernesto Zedillo Ponce de León. They reached an agreement in which the 26 Supreme Court magistrates were reduced to 11. But this system never worked because it always looked out for its own interests, guaranteed privileges to the richest in Mexico, and didn't address the demands of the people. Magistrates have been helping the wealthy dodge taxes, releasing criminals, and even obstructing the legislative progress of the Fourth Transformation.
I would say there are two types of opposition. One is more practical and has to do with the process. How are you going to choose more than 50 people in a country where people are used to voting for just one option? You have to choose several options, divide them by gender and then by judicial discipline, and you have to read their numbers and write them down on the ballot. There's a lot of practical complexity. The INE (National Electoral Institute) has also reduced the number of voting booths to half of what they had in the last election in 2024.
The second is more ideological. The opposition says we're heading towards authoritarianism — that the people elect their judicial authorities is authoritarianism. But this is a contradiction in terms, because more democracy does not mean more authoritarianism. After all, if Claudia Sheinbaum had wanted to have control of the Supreme Court, she could have achieved it in the coming years. There was no need to undertake such a profound reform.
After this reform, we need more reforms to the prosecutor's offices, the prison system, and so many others. Then there's the media aspect. The right may have lost the elections, but as has been seen in other Latin American countries, the electoral battle that is lost is transferred to the media and becomes a discursive battle. They try to suppress popular turnout. The main idea is to keep people from voting. “It's not worth it, it's all rigged, it's authoritarianism,” etc. The opposition tries to deactivate citizen participation. And we, the left wing, the Fourth Transformation, Morena — our task is to promote citizen participation.
A: Morena and the Fourth Transformation hold the majority in the country. They govern practically everywhere, in addition to the presidency of the Republic. They have a supermajority in the Legislative Branch — the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate. However, the opposition to this election is overwhelming. First of all, on the part of the partisan opposition, no opposition party in Mexico views this election favorably. There was terrible opposition from the Judiciary itself. The reform was opposed to the point of practically leading to a coup by the current justices of the Supreme Court.
In the corporate media, in the mainstream media, in the major television and radio networks in Mexico — Televisa, TV Azteca, Radio Fórmula — the election doesn't exist; they're making a complete omission. If you want to stay informed about the elections, you have no choice but to turn to social media. The mainstream corporate media, the mainstream traditional media don't look kindly on the election at all.
There's a significant sector within the business community, the large corporations, that don't look kindly on it either, even though they may not publicly express their opposition. Sami mentioned Ricardo Salinas Pliego. How could he want a judiciary elected by the people when he hasn't paid taxes his entire life because of the old system? The high Catholic clergy also don't look kindly on this election. We must remember that Mexico is at least 70% or 80% Catholic. And the opinions of Catholic clergy from the pulpit are also very important.
So, when we take a closer look, we see that the election isn't an easy matter. And we have another big problem: it's also not a very simple election because there's no prior experience, and citizens don't have much knowledge of how to vote. It's not a traditional election where you vote by party logos or a specific proposal. And every citizen will vote for between 50 and 80 candidates.
But it will work out. It's an enormous challenge that I'm sure will be met in order to demonstrate that democratization, including in the judiciary, is possible.
L: What’s important to understand about the electoral process?
A: If there's one thing that has characterized the Mexican situation, it's corruption. And if there's one place where corruption has traditionally reigned, it's the judiciary.
The other day, in an authoritarian outburst, the President of the United States, Donald Trump, faced with certain opinions from the Supreme Court Justices in the United States, asked, “Why are they attacking me? Who elected them? [The people] elected me.” The US court is not elected by the people, but by the president.
In the case of Mexico, what we're dealing with here is that the Supreme Court is the highest court at the national level. But the electoral courts, the circuit magistrate courts, and even the judges in labor matters, mixed matters, criminal matters, and civil matters, are all very powerful.
The observation we can make from the left is that popular movements — movements for social rights, movements for the people — are held back by the judicial powers, who don't see equal justice for all as it should be. There's justice for the rich, and there's little justice for the poor. You don't see millionaires in prison. The prisons are full of people who don't have the money to pay a good lawyer. Our goal is to end corruption, to end bribes and kickbacks for judges. It's no small feat.
S: We must also explain the need for a profound reform to end corruption, abuse of authority, nepotism, and the total simulation that has characterized the Judiciary. For example, the president of the Judiciary Council, Norma Lucía Piña Hernández, is also the President of the Supreme Court. In other words, she's both judge and jury; she has to police herself. There are many perversions. Nepotism is also a widespread problem.
Three filters have been established for the elections. First is documentation. For example, you need a bachelor's or master's degree in law, five years of practice, and letters of recommendation. All this documentation is reviewed. The second filter is drawing lots, and the third is the actual vote. Now, judges will owe their election to the people. This is a way of cleaning up, starting from the roots.
The political use of the justice system is also something to discuss. We have the case of the impeachment of López Obrador in 2005. We've seen it in so many Latin American countries, such as Bolivia, Ecuador, Peru, Honduras, and Argentina. One of the issues we want to prevent going forward is the judiciary interfering in political processes. The legislative branch makes the laws, the judicial branch ensures that the laws are complied with (which has practically never happened), and then the executive branch is in charge of governing the country. This is what we want.
L: Is there a candidate that catches your attention, or something that you’re looking for in the candidates?
A: More than personalizing, more than naming candidates, what we're seeking is a truly comprehensive transformation of the judiciary. A moment ago, Sami commented on something very interesting about the nepotism that existed and continues to exist in the federal judiciary. As you know, nepotism is the fact that officials within the judiciary have relatives within the judiciary. There's a survey conducted by the judiciary itself that indicated that more than 80% of the members had relatives within it, distributed across various courts, in various instances, in various tribunals. This is a problem that has lasted decades.
Many people have wanted to enter the judiciary for a long time, but the exams were rigged. The judiciary was made up of an elite who spoke their own language, and that legal language wasn't understandable to the people. Based on that bubble, they did whatever they wanted, according to the client's taste. And, of course, the best clients were the ones who paid the most.
If not for this democratic election, many people would never have had the opportunity to enter. However, there are a series of enormous challenges due to the large number of candidates and the lack of knowledge that ordinary citizens have about what the judiciary is. If the average citizen doesn't know what a judge is, they're even less likely to know who the best candidate is. This could result in some of those who are supposed to be removed from office now being elected by popular vote. This is a serious situation.
There has been criticism because there are about twenty candidates out there who don't meet the requirements, and there seems to be some connection to organized crime. The opposition has raised eyebrows about this.
But what's the advantage? We in Mexico haven't had an exceptional judiciary, an honest judiciary, a judiciary we're proud of. I believe the people who are elected will undoubtedly be better than what we have now. And that's precisely why we see the greatest opposition from within the judiciary itself, because it's a caste that has been doing whatever it wants for years. What we're trying to do is change that.
S: It’s also a historical debt. The Court has its colonial roots. In the time of Benito Juárez García, the Supreme Court was elected. But that precedent didn't last long, and since the Mexican Revolution, we have the same challenge of renewing this third branch, the judiciary. In 1917, great social progress was made at the constitutional level, but the democratic aspect was left pending. Progress has been made in the executive and legislative branches, but the judiciary has been left pending.
I was looking at an article from May 2023, when López Obrador outlined the 40 privileges of Supreme Court Justices. They have their own cafeteria; there's a budget for hiring staff; two armored suburban vehicles with a cumulative value of 6 million pesos; hazard pay of more than 640,000 pesos a year; support for gasoline; escorts if requested, insurance for cars and homes; all kinds of personalized attention at the airport; special lounges at the airport to offer exclusive meals and drinks; two 15-day vacation periods a year; three computers and printers; six cell phones and three iPads with unlimited internet service; personalized stationery; internet technical support; video surveillance in their homes; and health insurance (which is a whole issue), including 188,000 a year for prescription drugs. It's an endless list, isn't it? They earn several times more than President Sheinbaum.
In terms of candidates. There are currently three people on the Supreme Court who have shown they support the Fourth Transformation. Justices Loretta Ortiz Ahlf, Lenia Batres, and Yasmín Esquivel Mossa.
Candidates are also divided into different categories; some are appointed by the Judicial Branch, who are candidates that I will avoid, because there is a supposed continuation of corruption. Those from the Legislative Branch, where some could be suspicious candidates. There, the Executive Branch candidates; that's perhaps where one can play it safest, but it does involve a lot of work studying the candidates, and I think most won't have the opportunity to know exactly who they're voting for. It’s possible, but it does require time, effort, and dedication.
L: The list of privileges is long. Surely, it’s something of the same situation in the US.
A: I have to tell you, with shame, that the situation isn’t the same in terms of privileges. I think we can conduct an investigation and find out that not even in countries like the United Kingdom, France, Spain, Brazil, or Canada are such obscene privileges held by the judiciary, all of it paid for by tax dollars.
The problem with the judiciary in Mexico is that it didn't understand the call of President López Obrador's administration: privileges must end, Mexico is a different place, and this has to change. The judiciary clung to their privileges. Ultimately, for the good of the country, this led to Plan C, which is the complete and democratic renewal of the judiciary.
One of the flaws of this process is that Mexicans abroad won't be able to vote. But I’ll conclude by pointing out that this is an exercise that I, as a Mexican, am proud of. Thank you again for the invitation, Luke, now joined again by Sami, and congratulations on this podcast.
S: I’ll end with Josefa Ortiz Téllez Girón’s quote. As she said, "Those who serve the country should not be rewarded, but those who serve it should be punished." That's what has happened with such an elitist power, so far removed from the daily lives of Mexicans, a power that doesn't understand that this isn’t a world of luxuries where you should get rich quickly, but rather it's a service. You're in service to others. The judiciary is the last corner of the power that hasn't understood this. They are servants of the nation, not people who can set their own criteria. They must understand that the Constitution is above them, that the Constitution itself grants rights, which they must uphold in their daily practice.
Justice, social justice above all, must be above the law. In other words, laws in themselves are not the end, but rather a means to achieve a more just, more egalitarian society. And if we don't renew the judiciary, Mexicans won’t have equal rights.
It's also very important to understand that without a just, legal, and legitimate power, we cannot achieve the more just and egalitarian Mexican society we're still building. The executive and legislative branches have seen great progress. And now, with Plan C, the judiciary will see progress. We're going to the polls on June 1st, and the invitation is to go vote and make the effort to build a better Mexico.
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