El Chapo's former lawyer and an ex-drug smuggler are on the ballot to be judges in Mexico

CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico, May 24 (Reuters) - When residents in the state of Durango vote in Mexico's first judicial elections next weekend, Leopoldo Chavez will be on the ballot for federal judge - despite the nearly six years he served in a U.S. prison.
Chavez was convicted on drug offenses: for smuggling over 4 kilograms of methamphetamines in 2015. Durango is part of Mexico's Golden Triangle, a cartel-controlled region growing marijuana and opium poppies.
"I've never sold myself as the perfect candidate," Chavez said in a video he shared on Facebook. He said he had nothing to hide and had served his time. He declined to comment to Reuters.
In the nearby Pacific coast state of Jalisco, Francisco Hernandez is running to be a criminal magistrate even though the last time he served as a judge he was dismissed by the Federal Judiciary Council after an investigation into allegations of sexual abuse and corruption.
He told Reuters the accusations were "slander and defamation." "Let the people judge me," he said.
And in Nuevo Leon, Fernando Escamilla is hoping to become a federal criminal judge and says the legal work he did advising lawyers for members of the ultra-violent Los Zetas cartel should not be held against him. His knowledge of extradition law, on which he advised the capos, made him an asset, he told Reuters in an interview.
"Does being an advisor on international or extradition law give you a bad public reputation? I don't think so, since that's the only thing that demonstrates that you have the ability and knowledge to handle these types of situations," Escamilla said.
Ahead of the elections on June 1, civil organizations, judge associations and some Mexican lawmakers are raising serious concerns about a vote that critics warn could jeopardize the country's rule of law.
The controversial judicial overhaul was proposed by leftist former President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador and supported by his protege, President Claudia Sheinbaum. Both said it would root out corruption in Mexico's flawed judiciary and allow the people to decide who should be a judge.
Around 5,000 candidates are vying for more than 840 federal positions, including all Supreme Court justices.
But with the vote just over a week away, Mexican rights group Defensorxs says it has identified about 20 people vying for positions that have criminal indiscretions, corruption allegations against them or past links to cartels, including a defense lawyer who represented drug kingpin Joaquin 'El Chapo' Guzman.
An analysis by the Judicial Electoral Observatory (OEJ), made up of non-profit organizations, has also flagged more than 130 candidates with a high probability of winning in the absence of opposing candidates, and criticized problems in the design of complicated ballots that feature hundreds of names and may confuse voters.
The reform, passed in September 2024, was criticized by then U.S. ambassador Ken Salazar, who served during the administration of President Joe Biden, as a threat to Mexican democracy.
Critics say the reform, one of the most broad-ranging to be attempted in recent years by any country in the Western Hemisphere, risks removing checks and balances on the ruling Morena party and allowing organized crime groups greater influence over the judicial system.
The reform reduces the number of Supreme Court judges to nine from 11, cuts the length of their terms to 12 years, abolishes a minimum age requirement of 35, and halves necessary legal practice to five years. It also scraps some benefits for judicial workers and creates a five-person disciplinary tribunal, which critics argue is insufficient to oversee a 50,000-member judiciary.
Defensorxs president Miguel Meza said that the candidates his organization had flagged revealed grave flaws in the government vetting system, which was meant to verify eligibility criteria including: Mexican citizenship by birth, a bachelor's degree in law, "good reputation," and a record clean of serious crime.
Meza said his organization has been making its way through the list of candidates and had identified other problematic names that they had yet to publish.
Meza said aspiring judges were apparently not screened for foreign convictions or who they had legally represented. He put much of the problem down to rushing the election.
"Everything we're seeing is the result of trying to fast-track this reform," Meza said.
Sheinbaum's office and Mexico's federal judiciary did not respond to a request for comment on the reform or the vetting.
Both the ruling coalition and the electoral authority have tried to distance themselves from questions about eligibility, saying it is too late to do anything before the election. Victorious candidates proven to be ineligible will have to be removed after the vote, election authorities said.
A Mexican association of magistrates and judges, JUFED, said the list of controversial candidates confirms its view that the reform is a threat to judicial independence in Mexico.
"What's happening with the election is dangerous," said JUFED national director Juana Fuentes. "There is a serious risk that criminal interests or groups, or people representing them, could become involved."
Most of Mexico's sitting Supreme Court justices announced they would not participate in the elections and instead will resign.
Candidates cannot use campaign materials that link them to a political party, participate in events organized by political parties or accept donations of any kind.
Perhaps the candidate who has garnered the most headlines is Silvia Delgado, who represented the notorious El Chapo, former chief of the Sinaloa Cartel, in 2016. She visited him weekly in prison to share updates before he was extradited to the United States and eventually sentenced to life in prison.
Now, she hopes to become a criminal court judge in Chihuahua.
On a recent afternoon in the border town of Ciudad Juarez, Delgado braved the sweltering heat to hand out flyers and chat to voters outside a local school.
A single mom, who raised four children and put herself through law school, Delgado strikes a charismatic figure, in a black skirt suit and chunky heels.
"I'm not corrupt," she said, "they can't burn you for having represented someone."
"The best legacy I can give, as a human being and for my children and grandchildren, is to have been a person of integrity, who always defended people."
She said she considers her work representing El Chapo, which included filing a petition that he be provided a blanket in prison, to be in line with her professional duties.
Delgado is upfront about the reason she took on the job. It was, she says, a big step up for her as a lawyer; and one she'd take again. "I was interested because it was a career opportunity... Working on the case of such a famous figure."
She said she had not had any contact with El Chapo's lawyers since the case, though she did agree to help his wife, a U.S.-Mexican dual national, take her children to the United States.
She kept her harshest words for activist Meza, describing him as "irresponsible" and running a "Robin Hood group" bent on "directly attacking me."
Meza said Defensorxs was not interested in "attacking" any candidate, but exposing the risks associated with them.
"Our goal is to inform the public about these risks so they can take them into account when exercising their right to vote."
"It seems clear to us that this risk exists in Silvia Delgado's case," he added. He did not identify other concerns apart from her legal work for El Chapo.
Senate leader Gerardo Fernandez Norona, a powerful member of the ruling party, told Reuters the focus on the eligibility of certain candidates was a "racist, classist" media war aimed at discrediting the elections.
"It's not important. It's not relevant," Norona said, adding that people found ineligible could be withdrawn after the vote.
The INE electoral authority has made it clear that names cannot be removed ahead of the vote.
Claudia Zavala, an electoral advisor at INE, said the body should have been included earlier in the vetting process, which was conducted by committee members selected by Congress, the judicial power and the executive branch of government.
"It seems that splitting that function around other authorities was not ideal," she said.
Now, all that can be done by INE is a post-election review of any formal complaints about candidates in order to prove a person is ineligible to hold office, Zavala said. If a winner does not meet the requirements, the role would go to the second-placed finisher.
However, any investigation into a candidate's eligibility must be completed by June 15, Zavala said, when election results are finalized and positions confirmed.
"The evidence must be very clear," she said.

Try Our AI Features

Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:

Learn with AIFact CheckingText to SpeechAI Summary

Related Articles

BBC News

a day ago

• BBC News

Spain: Embattled Sánchez resists clamour for resignation

Seven years after taking office by ousting corruption-ridden conservatives from government, Pedro Sánchez is fighting for his political life amid investigations into alleged graft in his Socialist party (PSOE).On June 12, an ashen-faced prime minister apologised to Spaniards after audio gathered by civil guard investigators was made public and appeared to show the PSOE secretary, Santos Cerdán, discussing commissions paid by companies in exchange for public contracts.Sánchez has not himself been directly implicated, but the Socialist leader who came to power promising to clean up politics is now facing calls to resign from an invigorated who was party number three, has resigned from the PSOE and stepped down as a member of parliament. He is due to appear before the Supreme Court on 25 June. He maintains he has never committed a crime nor been implicit in one. The investigation into commissions is part of an ongoing probe which has already implicated José Luis Ábalos, a former PSOE secretary and transport minister. A third person implicated is Koldo García, an advisor to Ábalos. Both men featured with Cerdán in the recently exposed audio. All three say they have done nothing investigation into Ábalos, which began last year, was damaging for the government but his exit from the cabinet and the PSOE secretary post in 2021 put distance between him and Sánchez. However, the implication of Cerdán is more problematic.Sánchez had repeatedly defended him in the face of claims in the right-wing media over recent months that he was under investigation, and the prime minister even accused the opposition of "slandering honest people" when asked about Cerdán's activities last party secretary, from the northern region of Navarre, was a trusted confidant of the prime minister, playing a crucial role, for example, in negotiating the support of Catalan nationalists to allow the formation of a new government in acknowledging that he "should not have trusted" Cerdán, Sánchez has insisted that he will see out the legislature, which is due to end in a letter to PSOE members he apologised again, while doubling down."There are many issues that affect the lives of the majority – healthcare, housing, pensions, jobs, fighting climate change and defending equality – and for which it is worth fighting still," he wrote. "Challenges that are not solved with headlines or lynchings."However, the opposition has presented the investigation as symptomatic of a corrupt regime, pointing to other probes affecting Sánchez and his circle.A judge has been investigating the prime minister's wife, Begoña Gómez, for possible business irregularities - and his musician brother, David, is due to go on trial for alleged influence peddling in taking up a public post in the south-western city of Badajoz. Meanwhile, the Attorney General, Álvaro García Ortiz, is also likely to face trial for revealing confidential details of a tax evader. All three deny wrongdoing. Sánchez and his supporters have cast these three affairs as part of a campaign orchestrated by the conservative People's Party (PP), the far-right Vox, right-wing media and factions within the judiciary. A number of judicial experts have expressed surprise at the zeal with which the investigations have been carried a raucous parliamentary session this week, opposition MPs chanted "Dimisión" (Resign) at the prime minister, and Alberto Núñez Feijóo, leader of the PP, accused him of being "a wolf who has led a corrupt pack".Paco Camas, head of public opinion in Spain for polling firm Ipsos, sees a Sánchez resignation as "political suicide" for his party, because it would almost certainly trigger elections, allowing the PP to form a government, probably with the support of Vox."The overall trend right now is a demobilised electorate on the left, particularly for the Socialist party, and an enormous mobilisation of voters on the right, which is capitalising on the discontent with the government," Camas the Socialist president of the Castilla-La Mancha region, Emiliano García-Page, has warned that "there is no dignified way out" for the as long as Sánchez can keep his fragile parliamentary majority of left-wing and nationalist parties together there is little the opposition can do to bring him that end, the prime minister has been frantically trying to reassure these allies, many of who have voiced outrage at the Cerdán-Ábalos scandal. Camas believes that persuading them to support a 2026 budget could be a way for Sánchez to buy some such plans could be left in tatters were more explosive revelations to emerge, as many in the Socialist party worries will be playing on Sánchez's mind as he heads to the Nato summit in The an assured presence on the international stage, he will arrive with serious doubts about his future and under mounting pressure to raise Spain's defence his government has promised to increase military spending to 2% of economic output this year, it has been resisting calls from the United States and the Nato leadership to raise it further. Sánchez has now refused to accept a target of 5% of GDP for military spending, saying it "would not only be unreasonable but also counterproductive".

The Independent

2 days ago

• The Independent

Photos of Cristina Fernández supporters as she serves a prison sentence for corruption in Argentina

Supporters of former Argentine President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner have been gathering outside her Buenos Aires apartment and in the Plaza de Mayo for the past week after the nation's highest court upheld her sentence in a corruption case. Fernández was found guilty of illegally directing state contracts to a friend while she was first lady and president, and the ruling bars her from running in this fall's legislative election. A federal court has granted Fernandez's request to serve a six-year prison sentence for corruption at home, where she lives with her daughter and her granddaughter. The ruling cited her age and security reasons, after the 72-year-old survived an attempted assassination three years ago. This is a photo gallery curated by AP photo editors.

Reuters

2 days ago

• Reuters

Thousands march in Buenos Aires as ex-president Kirchner starts house arrest

BUENOS AIRES, June 18 (Reuters) - Tens of thousands of Argentines marched in the streets of Buenos Aires on Wednesday, banging drums and chanting in a show of support for ex-president Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner as she started a six-year sentence under house arrest for corruption. Kirchner, a two-term president from 2007-2015, is the country's most prominent politician in recent decades, though her leftist brand of populism sharply divides opinion. She is the nemesis of current libertarian President Javier Milei. Supporters from her Peronist movement took to the streets with flares, giant posters with her image, and banners saying "Always With Cristina", a reflection of how she retains popular backing with her core supporter base. Kirchner, 72, claims the allegations against her are politically driven. "It was what they needed to get rid of her, so she wouldn't be in the (election) running. They knew she could beat them," said Laura Abal, 66, a pedicurist who took part in the march, referring to Kirchner's foiled plans to run as a local lawmaker. Kirchner has some 20% voter support, polls show, though is opposed by many who recall her interventionist policies. She still holds huge sway over the opposition Peronists, Argentina's dominant political bloc in the last half century. Argentina's Supreme Court last week upheld a 2022 conviction against Kirchner related to a fraud scheme involving public projects in the southern Patagonia region. That also included a lifetime ban from holding public political office. Some analysts say the detention could, though boost her image by making her a political martyr, adding she could potentially exercise influence from her Buenos Aires apartment where the judge ordered that she serve out her sentence due to her age. "Can I go out on my balcony or not?" Fernández humorously asked on Wednesday on the social network X, a reference to how she could rouse the crowds in the streets below in potential violation of court orders not to cause disruption. Presidential spokesman Manuel Adorni on Wednesday avoided crowing over the sentence, though hailed the fact that "justice" had prevailed. "The arrest of a former president is not pleasant for any democracy, although, of course, it is a source of joy that justice exists and puts some things right," he said.