Mexico’s Supreme Court docket has elected a feminine president to steer the nation’s highest judicial physique for the primary time.
Following a six-to-five vote on Monday, Justice Norma Lucia Pina was sworn in for a four-year time period as president of the court docket, which she has promised to maintain impartial.
“Judicial independence is indispensable in resolving conflicts between the branches of presidency,” Pina stated on Monday. “My essential proposal is to work to construct majorities, leaving apart my private imaginative and prescient.”
Pina’s election might carry the court docket into higher confrontation with the administration of Mexico’s left-wing President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, whom Pina has sparred with over points equivalent to vitality coverage.
Already, Lopez Obrador’s relationship with the nation’s highest court docket is strained. The president has been outspoken in difficult the Supreme Court docket, significantly after the court docket blocked quite a lot of his insurance policies.
In November, for instance, Lopez Obrador accused the court docket of siding with white-collar criminals when it struck down a part of his “jail, no bail” coverage, which required necessary pre-trial detention for defendants accused of crimes like tax fraud. “What large shamelessness,” he stated, denouncing the justices.
Mexico’s Supreme Court docket holds elections for a brand new president each 4 years. With outgoing Chief Justice Arturo Zaldivar set to complete his time period on December 31, Lopez Obrador had thrown his weight behind one other justice, Yasmin Esquivel, within the hope of seeing a extra sympathetic chief elected to steer the Supreme Court docket.
However Esquivel’s candidacy was overshadowed by scandal when a December information report alleged that she had plagiarised her faculty thesis. Esquivel’s paper, introduced in 1987, was reportedly similar to 1 submitted a yr earlier, although she maintains the sooner thesis copied her work.
The general public college the place Esquivel obtained a bachelor’s diploma continues to be investigating the case.
Lopez Obrador attacked the allegations towards Esquivel as politically motivated. He stated on Monday that the nation’s judicial system had been “eclipsed by cash, by financial energy”.
Pina’s election, in the meantime, was welcomed by members of the opposition, with conservative politicians like Kenia López Rabadán applauding her appointment.
“Confronted with a president who violates the Structure, now greater than ever the Court docket should present independence, impartiality, objectivity and professionalism,” López Rabadán wrote on Twitter.
Some officers near Lopez Obrador have additionally welcomed Pina’s election.
“Now’s the time of human rights, the time for girls,” stated Senator Olga Cordero, Lopez Obrador’s former inside secretary, in a publish on social media.
Pina, who will oversee the nation’s total judicial department, has defended Mexico’s efforts to transition to renewable vitality. That has put her at odds with Lopez Obrador, who promoted a plan to carry the vitality sector beneath the management of the nationwide energy utility Comision Nacional de Electricidad (CFE) and the state oil agency Petroleos Mexicanos (Pemex).
Accusing his predecessors of implementing insurance policies that favoured personal firms, Lopez Obrador had sought to make higher state management over Mexico’s vitality sector a cornerstone of his financial agenda.
However his ambitions have confronted limitations in Mexico’s Supreme Court docket. The court docket invalidated key parts of his vitality plan, together with one which gave CFE precedence in connecting energy crops to the vitality grid.
In its ruling, the court docket invoked a constitutional obligation to chop the state’s carbon footprint.
Lopez Obrador’s vitality insurance policies have additionally introduced him into dispute with the US, which complained that Mexico’s insurance policies put US-based firms at an obstacle and violate the area’s commerce agreements. Canada has made related claims.
The worldwide dispute led to the resignation of Mexico’s financial system minister in October, amid fears that the grievance might end in Mexico dealing with punitive tariffs.
