Campaigning for Sunday’s judicial election may be strictly prohibited, but take a closer look at the streets of Bolivia’s capital, La Paz, and you’ll find some candidates discreetly sticking packets of corn flakes to their faces and others Has used subtle slogans in official voting Manuel.
After all, it is a popular vote, and even a little PR can work wonders when voters know nothing about the dozens of names on their massive ballots.
Bolivia is the only country in the world where elections are held for top judicial positions. Mexico may soon follow suit after former President Andrés Manuel López Obrador brought about highly controversial changes to the justice system despite mass protests.
As former Bolivian President Evo Morales did when he rebuilt the judiciary in 2009, López Obrador has supported the change to eliminate corrupt elites and promote democracy.
But disinterested Bolivian voters say the elections have had the opposite effect, turning their courts from neutral arbiters into political prizes.
When 25-year-old architecture student Marisol Nogales was asked how she would vote Sunday, she said, “I’ll toss a coin.”
It is never easy to find supporters of the system of electing judges in Bolivia, that is, more than one
A decade ago, the enrollment system rooted in qualifications and training was changed.
Around the world, academics, investors and judges have warned that judicial elections could strengthen the dominance of the ruling party and undermine checks and balances. And across Latin America, from El Salvador to Honduras, experts have called politicized judiciaries a deep threat to democracy.
In Bolivia, even senior judicial officials struggle to adopt a positive stance when asked to defend the election.
“This should be a calm, easy and simple process, but it has become very litigious, very contentious,” Francisco Vargas, vice president of Bolivia’s electoral tribunal, told The Associated Press from the court in central La Paz.
This year in Bolivia, experts are finding it even more difficult than usual to appreciate the system. Sunday’s vote was scheduled to take place in late 2023, with appointments to the posts being held every six years.
But as the deadline approached last year, the Constitutional Court, packed with allies of President Luis Arce, suddenly intervened and pushed the vote back by a year, exacerbating his power struggle with Morales, his former mentor and current rival, who is his longtime rival. Time will lead. Major left-wing party in Bolivia’s 2025 presidential election.
Both understand that whoever wins at the Constitutional Court ensures their political survival.
Arce cited the paralysis of his divided party to justify delaying the vote. Loyalists of Morales, who holds the majority in Congress and would have determined the shortlist of judicial candidates, accused Arce of illegally increasing the mandate of friendly judges out of fear of losing influence on the courts.
Former Justice Minister Iván Lima said, “What happened was chaos, a situation that could lead us to a major conflict.”
The Inter-American Court of Human Rights criticized the postponement of the elections, raising concerns about “the potential to undermine the effective functioning of the Bolivian justice system”.
Now, after several attempts to derail and further delay the vote, it is finally moving forward on Sunday. But there’s a catch: It’s a partial election. Only four of the nine seats on the powerful Constitutional Court are up for grabs. The other five – most of the sitting judges, as it happens – will remain in office.
Bolivian political analyst Paul Coca said, “The judges have turned the Constitutional Court into a kind of superpower.”
Judicial elections were held in Bolivia for the third time on Sunday. If the two previous rounds under then-President Morales, in 2011 and 2017, are any indication, turnout will be low. Both times, most Bolivians, angry or simply appalled by the notion of Morales’s allies supporting unknown judges pre-selected with little transparency, voted zero or blank.
Critics questioned the legitimacy of elected judges. But they nevertheless shaped the development of Bolivia’s democracy.
In 2016, Morales asked Bolivians in a legally binding referendum to decide whether to let him run for a fourth term, disregarding the two-term limit established in the 2009 Constitution.
When he did not get the answer he wanted – a slight majority voted “no” – his party found a solution through the flexible Constitutional Court, where judges ruled that Morales should not be barred from another term as president. Depriving them would be a violation of their human rights.
“This was his big mistake,” said former Supreme Court Chief Justice Eduardo Rodríguez Weltz.
It was Morales’ decision to run for re-election in 2019 that ended his remarkable 14-year tenure and ushered in a veritable parade of crises. As angry crowds took to the streets over allegations of electoral fraud, Morales resigned under pressure from the military and went into exile.
Mexico’s new President Claudia Sheinbaum, prepared for the fallout from the overhaul she inherited, is eager to see how Bolivia’s vote plays out. The Mexican voting authority, the National Electoral Institute, sent a delegation to La Paz this weekend to observe the process, Vargas said.