Judicial election results: Is this what they wanted?

Every day that passes, the failure of the judicial election becomes more evident. Not in political terms, since Morena will have absolute control of the Supreme Court, the Disciplinary Tribunal, and the justices. They would have obtained it either way. With the majorities they have in the Chambers, regardless of whether they were, it was a matter of time: by 2026, they would have had eight out of eleven justices and total control of the Judiciary. The election cost a fortune, a fortune that is urgently needed elsewhere, because, although they made it cheaper by removing half the ballot boxes, we spent seven billion pesos on a process that did not give the Judiciary the expected legitimacy and, on the contrary, it became clear that the so-called people had no interest whatsoever in electing judges and magistrates. What the people want is justice, and that will not be achieved with the Judiciary that is being formed.

The most pathetic case is the election of Silvia Delgado, who was El Chapo Guzmán's lawyer and will now be a criminal judge in Chihuahua. She received the second most votes in her jurisdiction. Perhaps, as she claims, she's just a scholar who put her knowledge in the hands of the highest bidder, in her case El Chapo, but it could have been anyone who paid her. The problem is that she passed all the election criteria and no one uttered a peep. Delgado was nominated by the Chihuahua executive branch, that is, by the government of PAN member Maru Campos.

Will the powers that be going to vouch for the judges, magistrates, and ministers they proposed? They, and only they, could propose candidates. So, if a judge or magistrate proposed by a governor or by the President herself becomes corrupt, will they respond as endorsements? Because that's what they did when they proposed them: endorsed their track record and suitability. Silvia Delgado's case is the most visible, but there are twenty others like her, according to the organization Defensorxs, chaired by Miguel Meza and which has conducted one of the most up-to-date monitoring of the election. There are many others who passed through the filters of the powers that be and don't meet the constitutional requirements for election, some of them absurd, such as having a grade of nine in the subject they intend to pursue and a minimum grade point average of eight in their degree. In other words, the representatives of the powers that have a monopoly on candidates weren't even good at reviewing resumes.

Interior Secretary Rosa Icela Rodríguez has already suggested the possibility of reforming the judicial system before the 2027 election. The question is whether the powers that be will now listen to the critics or continue walking alone, deaf and proud, into the hole they dug themselves.