MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
This month brings a new Congress from Mexico with a proposal that would let voters choose every one of Mexico's judges on the table. The outgoing Mexican president and president-elect support a constitutional amendment to remake the judiciary. But critics say it will bring judges to the bench who have little to no legal experience. Will Freeman is here to walk us through this. He is a fellow for Latin American studies at the nonpartisan think tank the Council on Foreign Relations. Good morning, Will.
WILL FREEMAN: Good morning.
MARTIN: What is behind this move? What do Mexican leaders think is wrong with the way judges are selected now?
FREEMAN: Well, the outgoing president, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, often called AMLO, and his successor, Claudia Sheinbaum, both argue that right now there is deep corruption in the Mexican judiciary and that only this reform can solve it. But their critics fire back that, in fact, this reform, by making more than 7,000 judges and all of the Supreme Court popularly elected, will allow organized crime groups to actually put more pressure on the judiciary to try to finance campaigns under the table, to intimidate judges who will now become candidates themselves, as we so often see with the assassination and intimidation of political candidates in Mexican elections. So on the one side, from the government, you have this argument about corruption. But on the other, you have, you know, these other arguments that there are serious risks alongside it.
MARTIN: Is there any way to gauge what the public thinks of this proposal? I mean, it is a very sweeping change. It would be, if adopted.
FREEMAN: Yes, it is. Yeah, you know, I think it's unfortunate that we don't have clearer information. On the one hand, the government has conducted polls. They say at least 59% of the public is in favor. There's also more critical media that has conducted polls that suggest many people don't actually know the, you know, fine details of the judicial reform - the fact that not only are judges going to be elected, there'll also be a new body dependent on the government that will supervise them.
So unfortunately, we don't have the best information, but I will say that this has been a key proposal of the governing party, the party of AMLO and Sheinbaum, and that their party did win a pretty sweeping majority in elections in June. So I think that, all in all, we can say that there's probably a majority support for this proposal.
MARTIN: Do you think that the public agrees that there is a problem with the judiciary now? - that this isn't just a preoccupation of the - of sort of the governing entities. Do you think that the public sort of broadly suspects that there is, or believes that there is, a problem that needs to be fixed, whether or not this is the right solution to it?
FREEMAN: Oh, absolutely. I think it'd be hard to find anyone in Mexico or who follows the country closely who would actually disagree with that statement. But the criticism we're often hearing now is that, in fact, the problem isn't really or mostly with judges - again, judges who, in criminal cases, decide on the guilt or innocence of a suspect - but, in fact, with prosecutors, the ones in - opening investigations, initiating cases, deciding who to investigate, who to charge.
And I mean, there, I can speak myself. I've spent a lot of time in Mexico talking to prosecutors, people who have passed through the prosecutor's office. Compared to other prosecutors offices I've gotten to know in Latin America, I think that corruption in Mexico - I mean, it has to be at one of the highest levels. In some states, the prosecutors' offices are, you know, fully subordinate to organized crime. So really, that should be, I think - and, you know, other people would argue, too - what the government should be focused on - the prosecutors, maybe at a state level, and local police making those stronger, more honest, more efficient.
But instead, they've trained - their eye are on the judges, which, you know, again, will tell you that maybe this does have to do something with the government trying to weaken checks and balances, trying to weaken, for instance, the Supreme Court, which has been one of the main entities in Mexico that's actually pushed back on some of the proposals and proposed legislation of this governing party.
MARTIN: OK. We only have about 20 seconds left, but, you know, in the U.S., there's a hybrid system. Judges at the highest levels are generally appointed, but there are judges at the local municipal and sometimes state level that are elected. Do we have any sense of whether there's a U.S. view of this?
FREEMAN: Well, you know, I think that the U.S. ambassador has been critical, but here's the big difference. In the U.S., we don't have sprawling drug cartels that assassinate and intimidate politicians.
MARTIN: All right.
FREEMAN: That's what you'll have with judges in Mexico.
MARTIN: That's Will Freeman. He's a fellow in Latin American Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. Will Freeman, thank you so much.
FREEMAN: Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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