MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
Mexico is one step closer to a historic change in the way the country's judiciary operates. The country's lower house of Congress passed a constitutional amendment that remakes the judiciary, and this bill now goes to the Senate. The constitutional fight is heating up on the streets of Mexico, from where NPR's Eyder Peralta joins me now. He's in Mexico City. Hey, Eyder.
EYDER PERALTA, BYLINE: Hey, Mary Louise.
KELLY: Hey, it sounds like you're really in the streets. Tell me where you are...
PERALTA: I am.
KELLY: ...and what you can see.
PERALTA: Yeah. So look, I - it's not an exaggeration to say that this is the kind of constitutional fight that you only get to see once in a lifetime. And what I'm seeing right now is this philosophical fight between branches of governments spilling out into the real world. Right now, I'm in front of the Mexican Congress. Judges and judicial civil servants, who are on strike, by the way, have blocked every entrance leading into the building.
In the courts, three different judges have also tried to issue injunctions prohibiting lawmakers from debating this reform, but none of it has been able to stop the progress of this reform. Members of Congress who couldn't meet right here simply packed up and they moved their session to a gym on the outskirts of town. And there, the lower house of Congress voted overwhelmingly to pass this constitutional amendment. And it seems like this will soon be the law of the land.
KELLY: OK, but - so back up. What are people...
PERALTA: Yeah.
KELLY: ...So fired up about? What would this reform actually change?
PERALTA: It would completely change the federal judiciary here. There are some small changes, including a provision that would lower the salaries for judges, but the big, big one is that judges in this country would no longer have to work their way up the judiciary and eventually be appointed judges. This reform means that, like the president, like senators, judges from the Supreme Court on down will have to run for office. Outgoing President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador and incoming President Claudia Sheinbaum say this will make the judiciary answer to the people instead of big business or organized crime. Congressman Ricardo Monreal today called this reform unique in the world, and he says, they have faith it will change Mexico.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
RICARDO MONREAL: (Speaking Spanish).
PERALTA: And he's saying, "we believe that we will end nepotism, corruption, influence peddling, the conflict of interest, the sale of justice to the highest bidder."
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MONREAL: (Speaking Spanish).
PERALTA: "We can no longer allow that," he says. "We can no longer accept that."
KELLY: So what is the controversy? - because what he's saying, ending corruption - that seems like a worthy goal. Would this reform not accomplish that?
PERALTA: I mean, it's an open question, but the critics of the reform - and that is a long list, Mary Louise, which includes the U.S., Canada, Human Rights Watch and all sorts of international experts on judiciary - say that the bigger problem is that judiciaries should not be designed to answer to a popular vote. That is not their role, they say. In fact, in model democracies, they're supposed to be shielded from politics so they can have a broader world view, so they can interpret a constitution that does not come and go like politicians do. One constitutional scholar I spoke to said that this has already been tried before in Mexico, and it ended in the executive controlling the judiciary. And when Mexicans were writing a new Constitution in 1917, they rejected it.
KELLY: So briefly, where does this go next?
PERALTA: So the Senate will vote. It goes to the state legislatures, then to the President. The ruling power - the ruling party, however, says that we should expect this to be the law of the land by mid-month. The judges and workers here say they will escalate these protests in the coming days.
KELLY: NPR's Eyder Peralta, reporting from right in front of the Mexican Congress. Thank you, Eyder.
PERALTA: Thank you, Mary Louise. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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