Mexico & Nafta - 9 December 2003
Senate does half the job
The senate only managed to pick one of the two new supreme court justices the country needs to appoint. The senate simply ran out of time while it tried to pick a new justice. This opens a nice constitutional question over whether it is entitled to ask the president to send it a fresh list of candidates. Theoretically, this can only be done if the senate rejected the candidates.
President Vicente Fox clearly wants more women on the supreme court bench. Of the six names he sent to the senate four were women and only two were men. The senate picked the obvious candidate, José Ramón Cossio, as one of the new justices: he had been the director of the law faculty at the Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México.
The senate got the names late from the executive. Technically, the justices' terms expired at the end of November. The calendar for resignations from the court was established in 1995. The first of the 11 justices went this year. In 2006 another two go, in 2007 a further two, and in 2012 two more. The final three judges of the 1995 batch will go in 2015. The only woman on the court, Olga María Sánchez Cordero, retires in 2015.
After the appointment of Cossio there are two women and one man left in the running for the remaining seat. As the only man, José Luis de la Peza, upheld the fine on the PRI for electoral malpractice, he is almost certainly a non-starter. The new justice needs the support of two thirds of the 128 senators.
President Vicente Fox clearly wants more women on the supreme court bench. Of the six names he sent to the senate four were women and only two were men. The senate picked the obvious candidate, José Ramón Cossio, as one of the new justices: he had been the director of the law faculty at the Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México.
The senate got the names late from the executive. Technically, the justices' terms expired at the end of November. The calendar for resignations from the court was established in 1995. The first of the 11 justices went this year. In 2006 another two go, in 2007 a further two, and in 2012 two more. The final three judges of the 1995 batch will go in 2015. The only woman on the court, Olga María Sánchez Cordero, retires in 2015.
After the appointment of Cossio there are two women and one man left in the running for the remaining seat. As the only man, José Luis de la Peza, upheld the fine on the PRI for electoral malpractice, he is almost certainly a non-starter. The new justice needs the support of two thirds of the 128 senators.
- The senate also has to decide whether to appoint the governor of the Banco de México, Guillermo Ortiz, for another six-year term. His current term expires on 31 December. His reappointment is not a foregone conclusion: lots of the
panistas who opposed his membership of the Ipab, set up to rescue bust banks, are now senators. Diego Fernández de Cevallos, a controversial
panista is leading the attack on Ortiz.