| | |  News Around the Republic of Mexico | September 2009 
Mexican Senate OKs Divisive Prosecutor Pick
 Miguel Angel Gutierrez - Reuters
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September 25, 2009
| | Arturo Chavez, center, raises his hand as he is sworn-in as Mexico's attorney general at the Senate in Mexico City, Thursday, Sept. 24, 2009. Chavez was a Chihuahua state prosecutor in the 1990's when hundreds of women were slain in Ciudad Juarez. (AP/Claudio Cruz) | |
PAGEMexico City - Mexico's Senate approved President Felipe Calderon's contentious pick for attorney general on Thursday in a boost for the government's army-led campaign against ruthless drug cartels.
Calderon named Arturo Chavez as attorney general to rejuvenate his struggling anti-drug effort, but the nominee ran into criticism for his record as top prosecutor in the northern state of Chihuahua, where he failed to stop the murders of hundreds of young women in the 1990s.
Senators from Calderon's ruling party and Mexico's main opposition party brushed aside those concerns after the government urged lawmakers to avoid a drawn-out approval that could hurt the fight against the cartels.
As the families of victims protested with funeral wreaths outside the Senate, senators voted 75 in favor of Chavez's nomination and 26 against, with one abstention.
Mainly leftist opposition senators voted against Chavez' nomination and said his record set a bad precedent.
"If the attorney general's office is going to be run like it was in Chihuahua things are not going to improve, they are going to get worse," said Senator Pablo Gomez of the left-wing Party of the Democratic Revolution, or PRD, during the debate in the Senate.
Chavez was sworn in immediately after the vote. "I'm here with my head held high and I will work in the same spirit, with transparency and honesty," he told a news conference.
Calderon removed Eduardo Medina Mora as attorney general this month as the death toll from turf wars between rival drug gangs like the Sinaloa and Gulf cartels climbs to 14,000 people since Calderon took office in December 2006.
The government's inability to defeat the cartels is Calderon's biggest challenge and is worrying foreign investors and the United States.
Chavez's nomination sparked protests from opposition parties, human rights activists and a group of European lawmakers who accuse him of shoddy police work and negligent investigations during a decade of unsolved murders in Chihuahua, particularly in the main city of Ciudad Juarez.
Dozens of people laid funeral wreaths with white flowers in protest against Chavez outside the heavily guarded Senate building in the Mexican capital.
"When he was attorney general in Chihuahua, the number (of killings of women) increased and he didn't pay enough attention even after many years of mothers denouncing the deaths," said Leticia Cuevas, a leader of a victims' support group.
Chavez denies any wrongdoing and says many murders were solved during his time in office between 1996 and 1998.
(Writing by Robin Emmott, editing by Chris Wilson)TEXT
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