MEXICO CITY (AP) — Protesters in Mexico City blocked the entrances to Congress on Tuesday over proposals to allow judges to run for office.
A mix of court workers, students and other critics chanted and stretched ropes across the entrances to the lower house of Congress.
Many workers, including those at the Supreme Court, have gone on strike to protest constitutional reforms proposed by President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s Morena party, which they say would politicize and deprofessionalize the justice system.
Under the current system, judges and court clerks, who act as assistants to judges, slowly qualify for higher positions based on their track records. But under the proposed changes, any lawyer with minimal qualifications would be able to apply, with some candidates being determined by drawing names from a hat.
The government claims the courts are corrupt, while critics say it is a power grab by the president and a blow to the independence of the judiciary.
The ruling Morena party has the two-thirds majority in Congress needed to approve the reforms. The party’s leader in Congress, Rep. Ricardo Monreal, said the vote would go ahead, but perhaps not in the official Congressional building.
Monreal said there are no plans to abandon the reforms and that lawmakers may be convened in a hotel or conference center farther from the city center.
“This reform is ongoing,” Monreal said in a recorded statement. He asked lawmakers not to try to enter Congressional headquarters, saying, “We don’t want to provoke incidents.”
One of the protesters, Javier Reyes, a 37-year-old federal court worker, vowed to stay in Congress as long as possible.
“The party with the majority could take control of the judiciary, and that would practically mean the end of democracy,” Reyes said.
Mexico’s courts have long been plagued by corruption and opacity, but over the past 15 years they have undergone reforms to make them more open and accountable, replacing many closed, paper-based trials with a more open format of oral arguments.
Voices at home and abroad say the new changes could be a setback in efforts to clean up the courts. But the changes also include a time limit on judges to rule on many cases, to counter the tendency for some lawsuits to drag on for decades.
López Obrador said last week that he was putting ties with the embassies of the United States and Canada “on pause” after the two countries expressed concerns about the proposed judicial overhaul.
Analysts, judges and international observers fear it would fill the courts with politically biased judges with little experience. The planned overhaul has sparked major protests and strikes, and widespread criticism from investors and financial institutions.
Last week, U.S. Ambassador Ken Salazar called the proposal a “risk” to democracy that would jeopardize Mexico’s commercial relationship with the United States. López Obrador slammed the ambassador, saying it was violating Mexican sovereignty.
After Morena and his allies won an overwhelming majority in the June 2 elections, López Obrador has vowed to press ahead with other constitutional changes that would abolish most independent regulatory and oversight bodies.
