Zaldívar’s successor must give priority to the social dimension: AMLO

Alonso Urrutia and Nestor Jimenez

Newspaper La Jornada
Friday, November 18, 2022, p. 5

With the succession in the Presidency of the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation underway, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador took stock of Arturo Zaldívar’s management in office: “I have the best opinion of the minister, what happens is that they are very flawed structures (…) I hope it ends well, he is a good person, people of integrity, but that is a monster, it will require continuing cleaning there”.

He declined to support any of the ministers who aspire to that position, but outlined what he would imagine and ideally want as a profile of the next president of the Court.

Someone who supports the rule of law is required with social dimension, exposed the President in the morning; that in litigation linked to business sectors prioritize the public interest; that guarantees respect for human rights in the processes and that banishes corruption, cronyism and influencerism within the judiciary.

He emphasized the need for the new minister-president to ensure that those with a lot of power are not released because they belong to organized crime or white-collar crime. López Obrador accepted that in the Judiciary there are good people, but they are not the majority.

The Executive took advantage of the question about his position in this process to review the vices that still prevail in the Judiciary, in which, he commented, there are sectors that operate as political parties.

ensured that the judges They protect themselves under the criterion of autonomy and raised: Do you know that they have decided that a judge committed a crime and is in jail? There is a Judicial Council for that, but no, nothing happens there. It’s like the castle of purity.

For more transparency in universities

López Obrador once again criticized the lack of transparency that exists in the management of resources in universities and urged that, without violating their autonomy, these institutions render public accounts.

He stated that in some cases those who run public universities act as businessmen, as caciques and the domain of a person or a group occurs for 30 or 40 years, in the Porfirian style.

There are groups, he pointed out, that occupy the university council and the councils in the faculties who are the ones who supposedly choose the rector. There are councils in each school, in each faculty, because they have everything well ironed, but it is pure simulation.