Judiciaries Gone Wild

WASHINGTON -- When political enemies in Mexico's Chamber of Deputies lifted his official immunity on April 7, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador entered a legal battle that could keep him out of the 2006 presidential election. Lopez Obrador, mayor of Mexico City and presumptive front-runner in the presidential race, may end up in prison for the unusual crime of failing to stop construction of a road to a hospital.

To most observers, the case against Lopez Obrador is a witch hunt inspired by forces that desire to end his political career and to influence an election. It is hard not to condemn it as such.

It would also seem that this case is one more example of a Latin American judicial system caving to the pressures of political expediency, a situation that would further confirm the stereotype of the region's judiciaries as weak and submissive systems rarely capable of justice. However, this stereotype is getting dated. Judicial systems in Latin America are now more likely to be both overactive and intransigent, a function of the growing pains of democracy combined with Latin America's obsession for rooting out corruption from its bureaucracies.

During the 1990s, many countries in Latin America were struggling to grapple with the scourge of corruption. Privatization of state-run companies involving millions of dollars led to many high-profile cases of bribery and kickbacks. Governments throughout the hemisphere recognized the urgent need for stronger judiciaries and improved government accountability.

Officials in charge of accountability -- attorneys general, prosecutors, comptrollers, ombudsmen -- started to feel the heat to show results. Alfonso Gomez Mendez, former prosecutor and attorney general in Colombia, fears, in fact, that the pressure for accountability led to enforcement efforts that have proved distracting and, worse, ineffective at rooting out corruption. Investigators, he said, are now busy targeting officials with minor disciplinary sanctions, seriously disrupting their work and their lives but in most cases not finding indications of graft.

Today, for instance, a typical midlevel official working at the mayor's office in Bogota, Colombia, may face five investigations a year in which he or she is personally accused. Investigations normally don't go past a first stage of preliminary inquiry. Even this first step requires hours and hours of preparation and gathering of evidence for a defense, time obviously not spent on the job. For most bureaucrats it ends there, but there are nightmare stories of officials who end up in prison and have their careers destroyed for something as simple as signing the wrong paper at the wrong time.

In 1999, the governments of the hemisphere created the Justice Studies Center of the Americas to support judicial reform. Today, in countries such as Nicaragua, Honduras and Ecuador, justice is still the weakest link in their democracies. The challenge there is to help judiciaries become more independent, reduce vulnerability from outside pressures and, above all, rule impartially. But in other countries such as Uruguay, Argentina and Brazil the judicial systems are very much in place, according to Juan Enrique Vargas, the center's executive director. The concern there, he said, is to ensure that greater independence, and the power that comes with it, is not abused.

The legal action against Lopez Obrador for ignoring a court order to suspend construction of the hospital road began in 2001. The case dragged on as prosecutors tried to track down who to blame for disregarding the order. Because Lopez Obrador held immunity from criminal prosecution while mayor, the prosecutors eventually asked congress to lift it.

Lopez Obrador's immunity was lifted in a partisan vote. What had been mostly a legal case for a minor violation became a political deformation. It was an opportunity too tempting for Lopez Obrador's opponents to pass up.

There is no secret that for a long time in Latin America, officials in executive and legislative branches manipulated and obstructed justice. Fortunately for democracy's development, judicial branches have grown increasingly stronger and more independent.

Active judiciaries are obviously not bad in and of themselves. For democracies and bureaucracies to further evolve, the demands for results must not devolve into prosecutions for minor violations while overlooking more serious problems. When that happens, government becomes severely debilitated.

Marcela Sanchez's e-mail address is desdewash@washpost.com.