Mexico and Central America correspondent
BBCAs drivers sit in site visitors close to the Bridge of the Americas connecting Mexico with the USA, Silvia Delgado weaves between the vehicles handing out leaflets.
“I am standing for penal decide,” she says brightly. “Vote for quantity 12 on the poll papers!”
Most fortunately wind down their home windows and settle for a flyer from her. However in Sunday’s fairly distinctive election – the primary of two votes by which Mexicans will select the nation’s whole judiciary by direct poll – Silvia Delgado is just not an extraordinary candidate.
Conspicuously absent from the brief biography on her pamphlets is the title of her best-known shopper: she was the defence lawyer for the infamous drug lord, Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzmán.
Her critics say her previous defending the chief of the Sinaloa Cartel ought to disqualify her from standing as a decide. She offers that concept brief shrift.
“Why ought to it? For doing my job?” she retorts at any suggestion of a battle of curiosity.
“For defending individuals’s particular person ensures? For mounting an enough technical defence for a human being? Why ought to that make me illegitimate?” she asks.
Getty PicturesSilvia Delgado has not been convicted of any crime, is just not dealing with any prices and isn’t below investigation – whether or not over her hyperlinks to El Chapo or the rest.
However a number one human rights and transparency organisation in Mexico known as Defensorxs has included her in a listing of 19 “excessive danger candidates” within the election. In addition to Ms Delgado, the checklist features a candidate with a drug trafficking conviction and one other dealing with accusations of orchestrating violence towards journalists.
The director of Defensorxs, Miguel Alfonso Meza, believes the so-called “excessive danger candidates” are a hazard to the legitimacy of Mexico’s justice system:
“Somebody that has already labored with a cartel, it is extremely tough that they get out, even when it was solely as a lawyer. It isn’t even about whether or not she’s a superb individual or a foul individual,” says Mr Meza, referring to Silvia Delgado.
“The Sinaloa Cartel is just not solely ‘El Chapo’ Guzman. It’s a firm that has prison and financial pursuits that are being resolved within the justice system. The cartel might strain her to point out loyalty as a result of she has already been their worker.”
Silvia Delgado visibly stiffens on the point out of Defensorxs and Miguel Alfonso Meza.
“It is fully silly,” she bristles, claiming she has challenged them to “dig into her previous as a lot as they like”. She additionally dismisses their major accusation that she was paid with drug cash and may very well be compromised if she is elected decide.
“How are you going to show that? I obtained a fee which was the identical as any regular month-to-month fee which was paid to me by legal professionals, members of his authorized crew. I am not his daughter or his sister or something. I am an expert.”
Ms Delgado is competing for certainly one of greater than 7,500 judicial place up for grabs – from native magistrates to all 9 Supreme Court docket justices.
Whereas it was below dialogue, the judicial reform prompted widespread protests by regulation college students and a strike by employees within the authorized system. Its critics preserve that electing each decide in Mexico quantities to the politicisation of the nation’s justice system.
“After all, it is a political assault [on the judiciary],” says Miguel Alfonso Meza.
“Former President Andrés Manuel López Obrador did not prefer to have constraints from the judicial energy. When the strain turned too nice and the constraints too tight, the one resolution they discovered was to take away all of the judges within the nation,” he provides.
This reform was handed earlier than President Claudia Sheinbaum was sworn in, however she is a agency supporter of it and polls recommend it has broad approval among the many citizens too.
Supporters level out that america, Switzerland and Bolivia elect a lot of their judges. However Mexico will change into the primary nation on the planet to elect all of them. Markets stay unconvinced with traders terrified of the prospect of the ruling social gathering controlling the presidency, the legislative department and the judiciary.
Miguel Alfonso Meza believes that issues will come up from “the agreements and negotiations judges should make with political actors… to be able to get the assist they should win the elections”.
One of many 64 candidates searching for a seat on the Supreme Court docket is Olivia Aguirre Bonilla. Additionally from Ciudad Juárez, her authorized background is in human rights regulation and as an activist towards gender-based violence within the notoriously harmful border metropolis.
Like all of the candidates, Ms Aguirre Bonilla has needed to pay for her marketing campaign out of her personal pocket – candidates are banned from accepting public or non-public funding and forbidden from buying promoting spots. As such, she’s primarily used social media to push out her 6-point plan from clamping down on exorbitant salaries to opening the Supreme Court docket hearings to the general public.
Whereas she acknowledges the criticisms over the potential politicisation of Mexico’s justice system, Aguirre Bonilla believes the vote is a chance for significant change of a collapsed, corrupted and nepotistic judiciary.
“I feel all of the residents in Mexico are politicised, and we’re all a part of public life,” she says.
“The distinction right here is that our ‘untouchable’ authorized system – and it was untouchable as a result of it was managed by the elites, by privilege – for the primary time in historical past can be voted in. It is going to be democratised via the favored vote.”
Many individuals within the judiciary had been there via affect and familial connections, Aguirre Bonilla argues, and it lacks the legitimacy of the manager and legislative branches.
“This vote will grant the justice system true independence as it is not chosen by the President of the Republic however elected by the individuals of Mexico to characterize them.”
To this point, the arguments over constitutionality and legitimacy, over the method and the candidates have been bitter and fierce.
Now all eyes flip to the polling stations, notably on the turnout and abstention charges as indicators of Mexicans’ backing for the reform.
As for Silvia Delgado, the girl who defended Mexico’s most wished drug lord, she simply hopes the individuals of Ciudad Juárez will respect her work sufficient to permit her to take a seat in judgement of different criminals who’re introduced earlier than her.
