- By not standing up, the minister responded with honor to a presidential humiliation.
The slander against the president of the federal judiciary, Norma Lucía Piña Hernández, in the sense that she did not respect “protocol” when applauding President López Obrador, has no ethical or logical basis.
Whatever the reason why she did not get up from her seat and although President López Obrador ventures that perhaps “she was tired” or, more likely, that she “did not want to get up” (standing up would be the right thing to do), the lady had just of being offended by the president, first with a contemptuous greeting to her and Santiago Creel, and then for having changed her place by sending her to the end of the presidium together with the president of the deputy Board of Directors.
The protocol was undoubtedly altered but by the Presidential Assistant, not on its own initiative but following instructions to change the place of the cards with the names of those who would flank the head of state on the 106th birthday of the Constitution, also reassigning the seats of the secretaries of the Defense and the Navy to build a military wall between AMLO and the others.
As always and until this Sunday, the habitual thing was that the holders of the judicial and legislative powers flanked the president.
Knowing that it will be impossible for him to prove that those who applaud his boss must stand up, spokesman Jesús Ramírez tweeted:
“In the act of the 106th anniversary of the Mexican Constitution, we witnessed the vitality of our institutions with a debate of ideas between the representatives of the three powers of the Union. It is unfortunate that not everyone respected the protocol of the ceremony.”
The deliberate presidential discourtesy was not directed at Piña and Creel but at their inaugurations as representatives of the Judiciary and the Chamber of Deputies.
Regarding the minister, López Obrador said yesterday:
“I was very pleased because it was noticed. I think it was because she was tired or the Minister President of the Supreme Court of Justice did not want to stand up, but she gave me great pleasure, she gave me great pleasure because that had not been seen before. The ministers of the Court were employees of the president (…). When had the president of the Court been seen to remain seated in such an act? (…). It is no longer the president who gives orders to ministers (…). It would be very easy to name the president or the president of the Court from the National Palace, as was done before…”.
Apparently he did not notice that he also went on to brush Minister Arturo Zaldívar, whom he insistently promoted to remain two years longer than the law allows as head of the Judiciary and who always applauded him standing up.
About Santiago Creel, who he usually refers to in a contemptuous or mocking way, he commented on his demand for dialogue as follows:
“Sometimes, when they say ‘we want dialogue’, we say: No. It’s not that we don’t respect and that in democracy there must be plurality (but) it’s that the dialogue they want seeks perks, it’s going back to the Moches.”
The paradoxical thing is that it invokes respect…
#Dignity #disdain #Minister #Piña