Mexico is ready to celebrate this Sunday the unprecedented election of judges and magistrates, in the midst of opposition criticism, boycott threats and the possibility of a low citizen participation.
The election, the first of this type that is organized in the country, was promoted by former president Andrés Manuel López Obrador (2018-2024), who sought to “democratize” the judiciary in Mexico, that is, that citizens chose their members and not the Senate, as previously happened.
The initiative was approved by Congress in September 2024, in the last days of the former president, and received strong criticisms of the opposition that argues the risk of opening the doors to which judges respond to factual powers, including organized crime.
Opposition calls peaceful resistance
The process has generated the rejection of the political opposition, which has called to boycott the elections, and plans a march on the same Sunday to show its disagreement.
“The vote of the Judiciary has nothing to do with democracy. On the contrary, it threatens the division of powers in our country,” said the presidential senator and former presidential Xóchitl Gálvez.
Leaders and specialists have suggested the null vote or simply not participating, because they consider that it is an “absurd” process, unclear and confusing.
“This is an absurd process, in which people vote for a candidate who do not know, for positions whose functions do not even imagine, in inscrutable tickets that will also not be counted by citizens, they will be told in the ‘dark’,” said Macario Schettino, professor at the Government School of the Tecnológico de Monterrey.
The teacher called for not participating in the election “not to be an accomplice of this farce, of the destruction of the Republic.”
However, the president of the National Electoral Institute (INE), Guadalupe Taddei, has expressed concern about the campaigns that call to avoid the vote, because it ensures that participation is “a democratic commitment.”
Choice under the magnifying glass
The process will be observed by national and international missions. The Organization of American States (OAS) has sent a reduced delegation to monitor the development of the electoral day.
In total, it is estimated that some 375 foreigners, from 40 countries, will observe the electoral day.
In that sense, the Executive Secretary of the INE, Claudia Arlett Espino, said that the result obtained on the participation of Mexicans in the day will have a “high degree of confidence” and made it clear that, with the exception of the electoral authorities, no one will have access to the information that emanates directly from what was established by the officials at the close of the boxes.
The INE has promised that the process will be “complete and transparent”, although it has warned that it will take about 10 days the total computation of the votes.
Low participation
Experts have anticipated that Sunday’s unprecedented election could have a low citizen participation, partly due to generalized ignorance on the profiles in contest and the function of the Judiciary.
“Just reviewing the personal profile of each of the candidacies makes it complex, because a citizen or a citizen who also dedicates himself to doing other things for his daily survival, how much can he dedicate to him or would he have to dedicate to really review these profiles?” Said Carlos Maldonado Alvarado, academic of the Department of Social and Political Sciences of the Ibero -American University.
In addition, in the presidential election of 2024, where Claudia Sheinbaum won, the participation was 59.6 % of the nominal list, the lowest since 2006.
In contrast, in the 1994 and 2000 elections the participation reached picos of 77.2 %and 64 %, respectively, while the 2012 and 2018 elections saw a recovery by exceeding 63 %.
However, for this first judicial election, the Mexican electoral entity has predicted a participation of between 13 and 20 % of the almost 100 million citizens who are called to the polls.
In addition to this, the process in which 881 positions of the Judiciary will be chosen, lives the threat of boycott by the Mexican teaching, which adds more than 15 days of protests in the country demanding labor improvements, the abrogation of the pension law of 2007 and a 100 % increase to its salary.
With EFE information.
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