Mexico’s Supreme Court has elected a female president to head the country’s highest judicial body for the first time.
After a six-five vote on Monday, Judge Norma Lucia Pina was sworn in to a four-year term as the court’s president, which she has vowed to remain independent.
“The independence of the judiciary is essential to resolve conflicts between branches of government,” Pina said on Monday. “My main suggestion is to work towards building majorities while ignoring my personal vision.”
Pina’s election could put the court in a major confrontation with the government of Mexico’s left-wing President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, with whom Pina has fought over issues including energy policy.
Lopez Obrador’s relationship with the nation’s highest court is already strained. The President has openly challenged the Supreme Court, particularly after the court blocked a number of its directives.
In November, for example, Lopez Obrador accused the court of siding with white-collar criminals when it struck down part of its “prison without bail” policy, which mandated mandatory pre-trial detention for those accused of crimes such as tax fraud. “What an outrageous shamelessness,” he denounced the judges.
Mexico’s Supreme Court elects a new president every four years. With outgoing Chief Justice Arturo Zaldivar due to end his term on December 31, Lopez Obrador had lined up behind another justice, Yasmin Esquivel, in hopes that a more sympathetic leader would be elected to run the Supreme Court.
But Esquivel’s candidacy was marred by scandal when a December news report claimed she had plagiarized her college thesis. Esquivel’s work, submitted in 1987, was reportedly identical to one submitted a year earlier, although she claims the earlier work copied her work.
The public university where Esquivel earned his bachelor’s degree is still investigating the case.
Lopez Obrador attacked the allegations against Esquivel as politically motivated. He said Monday the country’s justice system had been “eclipsed by money, by economic power.”
Pina’s election, meanwhile, was welcomed by members of the opposition, with conservative politicians such as Kenya’s López Rabadán welcoming her appointment.
“Now more than ever, in the face of a president who violates the constitution, the court must show independence, impartiality, objectivity and professionalism,” López Rabadán wrote on Twitter.
Some officials close to Lopez Obrador have also welcomed Pina’s choice.
“Now is the time of human rights, the time of women,” Senator Olga Cordero, former Lopez Obrador Interior Minister, said in a social media post.
Pina, who will oversee all of the country’s judiciary, has defended Mexico’s efforts to transition to renewable energy. That brought her into conflict with Lopez Obrador, who was promoting a plan to bring the energy sector under the control of national energy company Comision Nacional de Electricidad (CFE) and state-owned oil company Petroleos Mexicanos (Pemex).
Lopez Obrador accused his predecessors of pursuing policies that favored private enterprise and sought to make greater government control of Mexico’s energy sector a cornerstone of his economic agenda.
But his ambitions ran into obstacles in Mexico’s Supreme Court. The court invalidated important parts of its energy plan, including one that gave CFE priority in connecting power plants to the energy grid.
In its ruling, the court cited a constitutional obligation to reduce the state’s carbon footprint.
Lopez Obrador’s energy policies also got him at odds with the United States, which has complained that Mexico’s policies discriminate against US-based companies and violate the region’s trade agreements. Canada has made similar claims.
The international row led to the resignation of Mexico’s economy minister in October amid fears the complaint could result in Mexico being hit with punitive tariffs.