Victor Fuentes/Reform Agency
Thursday, January 12, 2023 | 2:20 p.m.
Mexico City.- Minister Yasmín Esquivel Mossa normally participated today in the plenary session of the Supreme Court of Justice, hours after the UNAM confirmed that her degree thesis is a copy of one previously presented.
Esquivel did not ask to speak, in a public session of only 19 minutes, in which the Court dispatched a couple of minor matters.
Court sources reported that the plagiarism revealed in December, when the court was on vacation, has not been discussed by the ministers in any private session.
They added that the Court does not have the power to remove or marginalize Esquivel from his duties.
The Congress of the Union, through a political trial, is the only one that can dismiss a Minister of the Court.
But in Mexico, at the federal level, there has never been a trial of this type, similar to the US impeachment, and to move it forward, a simple majority is needed in the Chamber of Deputies to present the accusation, and a two-thirds majority in the Senate. to impose the sanction, which is impossible without the participation of legislators from Morena.
After confirming the plagiarism of the thesis, UNAM clarified that it does not have legal tools to annul Esquivel’s professional title, and sent the case to the Ministry of Public Education (SEP), which is the authority that issued the professional license of the UNAM. Minister.
Article 95 of the Constitution does not mention the identity card as a requirement to be a Minister, but only “possessing a professional title of law degree.”
Another requirement of 95, prior to the appointment to the Court, is the following:
“Enjoy a good reputation and not have been convicted of a crime that warrants a corporal penalty of more than one year in prison; but if it is about theft, fraud, forgery, breach of trust and another that seriously damages the good reputation in the public concept , will be disqualified from the position, whatever the sentence has been”.
Beyond the fact that there could have been some crime in the plagiarism of the thesis, the Attorney General’s Office of Justice (FGJ) of Mexico City has already clarified that the illegal statute prescribed due to the passage of time, since the events occurred in 1987, when Esquivel presented an almost identical thesis, paragraph by paragraph, to the one defended in 1986 by Edgar Ulises Báez.
Esquivel has maintained that she did the original version of the thesis, and has presented supporting statements from Professor Martha Rodríguez Ortiz, who directed both her work and that of Báez.
The FES Aragón opened a disciplinary procedure against Rodríguez, since there are several additional theses very similar to those of Báez and Esquivel. On January 2, prior to the election of the new president of the Court, Esquivel addressed a message in which he described the scandal of his thesis as “interference by powers that be” to influence said election, in which he only obtained two votes, as well as an attack on judicial independence.
Eleven years remain from Esquivel Mossa’s appointment as Minister that she assumed in March 2019, after being nominated by President Andrés Manuel López Obrador to replace Margarita Luna Ramos.
Once his term ends, when he will be 69 years old, Esquivel will be entitled to a lifetime retirement asset, equivalent to 80 percent of the income of active ministers.
