Judge Norma Lucía Piña Hernández has become this Monday the first woman to occupy the presidency of the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation in its more than 200 years of history.
Piña won six votes in favor and five against in the third round of voting and thus prevails in the process over her rival, Alfredo Gutiérrez Ortiz Mena to preside over the court between 2023 and 2026, reports Mexican newspaper ‘La Jornada’.
The process has been marred by accusations of plagiarism in her undergraduate thesis by one of the candidates, Yasmín Esquivel Mossa.
The first woman on the SCJN took office in 1961, María Cristina Salmorán de Tamayo. Since then there have been 14 women in Mexico’s highest judicial body. There are currently four female judges and seven male judges on the court.
The opposition National Action Party (PAN) and the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) have celebrated Piña’s election and emphasized that her appointment guarantees the independence of the highest court.
The president of the PAN, Marko Cortés, has pointed out that «for no one it is a secret that in recent years the highest court and the Judiciary have lived a permanent harassment from President» Andrés Manuel López Obrador. «We trust that the new presidency of the Court will not give in to the pressures that, undoubtedly, will not be few,» he said.
Cortés has thus called for «a counterweight to the Executive» that «acts in a timely manner to avoid any kind of violation of rights and guarantees» in the face of «authoritarianism».
The parliamentary spokesman of the PRD, Luis Espinosa, has indicated that in Monday’s election «the pressures of the government» did not work. «The autonomy of the institutions must be defended against authoritarian pretensions», he added.
Source: (EUROPA PRESS)
