CIVICUS discusses Mexico’s recent judicial elections with Gladys Morales Ramírez, a Mexican researcher who holds a PhD in Social Sciences.
On 1 June, Mexico held the world’s first popular election of all federal judges, part of a broader package of judicial changes begun by former President Andrés Manuel López Obrador. The government promoted it as a democratising initiative, but with only 13 per cent turnout, the election failed to achieve the democratic mandate reformers claimed to seek. Civil society, academics and the political opposition warned this was as a populist manoeuvre with the aim of dismantling institutional checks on executive power. Mexico’s innovation could offer a dangerous new template to populist leaders around the world, enabling them to concentrate power under cover of democratisation.
