The Electoral Tribunal of the Federal Judicial Branch is under all kinds of pressure. The upper chamber must qualify the June 2021 elections, the largest in the history of Mexico with the renewal of the Chamber of Deputies and the election of 15 governors and 2,000 other positions. The seven magistrates that comprise it – who came to office proposed and voted for by the political parties in 2016 – can annul any process and reverse the results of any competition. In recent months, however, this unique body of its kind in the country has been plagued by corruption scandals and accusations of conflicts of interest that weaken a judge’s main strength, its independence.
“The uncertainty generated by the Electoral Tribunal is so great that it is not an exaggeration to say that today it is possible to win at the table what was lost at the polls,” says Javier Martín Reyes, professor in the CIDE Division of Legal Studies. “Most of its members have passed sentences that are unsustainable in legal terms and that show a clear subordination to the power in turn,” adds the academic.
On Wednesday, August 8, 2018, Andrés Manuel López Obrador walked through the doors of the Court as the undisputed winner of the presidential elections. The politician arrived to finalize a formalism, collect the record that officially made him president-elect. Those who were inside the solemn session describe the complicity between the officials and the regime that would come to power on December 1. “There were those who were close to breaking their neck in order to catch a glance with the president,” says a person present at the event and who does not want his name to be mentioned. There were several requests that morning to change the seating arrangements. Many wanted to sit in the corridors, near López Obrador or greet him as he entered or left. The eclipse of power began in turn to the judges in charge of imparting justice to the parties.
The new government soon knocked on the court’s door. On Saturday, December 8, 2018, seven days after López Obrador was sworn in, a group of representatives had breakfast with Magistrate Janine Otalora, president of the Electoral Tribunal. The interlocutors were Julio Scherer, the legal adviser to the presidency; Arturo Zaldívar, judge of the Supreme Court and who weeks later would become the head of the Judiciary, and a senator from Morena, the government party, as confirmed by two participants of the meeting to EL PAÍS. They wanted Otálora to support the vote, scheduled for hours later, of a project that invalidated the governor’s elections of Puebla in July, where the conservative PAN had prevailed over Morena in a closed election. The group left the meeting without Otálora’s commitment. The president’s vote was decisive to endorse the victory, four votes to three, of the PAN Martha Érika Alonso, who died in a plane crash 16 days later.
Janine Otálora resigned from the presidency of the court on January 23, 2019. The magistrate had presided over it since November 2016 and she still had more than a year left to complete four years of mandate. The judge threw in the towel by acknowledging in a statement that the country was living “a new era” and that it was taking a step back to “adapt to changes” and facilitate the transition of the TEPJ. In his place was the magistrate Felipe Fuentes Barrera, who came to office on the same date as Otálora but promoted by the PRI bench in the Senate.
The arrival of Fuentes Barrera accelerated a process of rapid changes within the body. He was a substitute president and had to cover the 22 missing months of Otalora’s management, eight of them in the middle of the pandemic. Fuentes Barrera made 798 movements within the Court, which has 1,535 jobs. In just 18 months, the interim decided to change 51% of the institution’s staff according to documents reviewed by EL PAÍS. Most of these settings were for the middle and upper controls.
Many of the profiles chosen by Fuentes Barrera have ties to political groups. Especially with the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI). There is no prohibition in law for people with backgrounds in political parties to hold positions in the Court, but the magistrate’s sympathies were clear. President Enrique Peña Nieto (2012-2018) proposed him in November 2015 in a shortlist to occupy a seat in the Supreme Court of Justice. The vacancy was resolved with the controversial Eduardo Medina Mora. “This is one of the many faces of the Court’s partisanship. It is extremely serious for a Court that should be and appear as independent as possible with respect to the parties ”, considers the academic Javier Martín Reyes, who was Otálora’s advisor within the Court.
Among the registrations approved by Fuentes Barrera was Gabriela Chágary Lammel and Vicente Barrera Rodríguez as General Director of Institutional Relations and assistant to the general coordinator of advisers, respectively. Before coming to the judiciary, both were part of Enrique Peña Nieto’s team of speechwriters in Los Pinos.
Luis Raúl Flores Arreola became head of unit in the General Directorate of Systems. In the previous government, Flores was the private secretary of Arely Gómez González, secretary of the Public Function (SFP) and Attorney General during the PRI administration. While other collaborators of Peña Nieto are persecuted by the current López Obrador government, Gómez was one of the few former employees who had continuity in the federal public service. Since January 2019, she has been the Comptroller of the Judiciary. Other former Gómez employees in the SFP and the PGR also found shelter in the Electoral Tribunal. This is the case of Jorge Mier and de la Barrera, who until November 2020 as general coordinator of advisers to President Fuentes Barrera with a salary of 121,000 pesos.
Not all the appointments have ties to the PRI. Among the registrations registered in 2020 is that of María Creel Garza Ríos, daughter of Santiago Creel, who was the Secretary of the Interior (Interior) of President Vicente Fox (2000-2006) and one of the most prominent profiles of the conservative National Action Party (BREAD). Creel Garza Ríos, who graduated from UNAM in 2015, works as a judge within an administrative secretariat with a salary of 86,000 pesos per month.
Hiring and scandals
Another change was made in the area of Institutional Protection, in charge of security, surveillance and protection of the institution’s network and which has one of the highest salaries within the institution: 118,800 pesos per month. Fuentes Barrera elected Otoniel López Treviño as CEO, who has experience in the matter, but lacks a university degree according to the curriculum consulted by EL PAÍS, one of the requirements of the Court’s internal regulations. López Treviño worked, from January 1994 to August 2011 at the National Intelligence and Security Center (Cisen), the Mexican spy center.
In his almost 20 years in the Cisen, López Treviño coincided with the now electoral magistrate José Luis Vargas Valdez, who worked at the Intelligence Center between 2007 and 2010. Vargas, who also worked for a period under the orders of Santiago Creel in the Interior, arrived to the Court promoted by senators of the PRI in 2016. He was in charge of the Administration Commission of the organ until a castling took place in November. He took over from Fuentes Barrera in the presidency of the body and he went on to head the administrative tasks.
Vargas’ three months at the head of the institution have been surrounded by controversy. In November, the daily Reform made public that the Financial Intelligence Unit of the Ministry of Finance had gone to the Prosecutor’s Office months before to file a complaint for money laundering and illicit enrichment. The assets of the magistrate, who has a long career in the public administration and as a litigant in the service of politicians, aroused the suspicion of the authorities. In six years, the judge spent 36 million pesos ($ 1.7 million) more than his declared income. The UIF prosecutor argued that only in credit cards the lawyer had spent 29 million pesos in the period when he had claimed to have entered 16 million. Vargas rejected the accusations in a statement, stating that the origin of his assets “is perfectly legal and fully accredited.”
The closeness of electoral judges and politicians is not new. Experts consider that the original sin for the current composition of the Court was committed on October 11, 2016. That day the PRI and the PAN, the majority parties in the Senate at the time, voted to extend the mandate of four of the seven magistrates. Left-wing parties, including Morena, opposed the proposal made by President Enrique Peña Nieto’s legal adviser, Humberto Castillejos. After the endorsement of Congress, justices Felipe Fuentes and Reyes Rodríguez went from a 6-year post to one of 8. Justices Mónica Soto, Janine Otálora and Felipe de la Mata were left with the same 9-year term. These five officials qualified the 2018 election and they will also qualify for the 2024 presidential election. Vargas, who is presiding over the Court, passed after the legislative vote from 3 years to 7, as did Indalfer Fernández. Both will leave the organ in November 2023.
For Javier Martín Reyes, a specialist in constitutional and electoral law, that vote sent a clear message from the parties to the magistrates. Politicians could reward them with appointments and term extensions, but they could also punish them. “Unfortunately, most of its members have acted accordingly. The magistrates who used to favor the PRI before now play in favor of Morena and his allies, that is, the new dominant coalition ”.
source https://pledgetimes.com/the-electoral-tribunal-faces-its-most-complex-year-weakened-by-scandals-and-conflicts-of-interest/
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