Interim Prosecutor Ernestina Godoy is practically the only one in the process of appointing the new head of the Office of the Prosecutor of the Republic, inaugurated by the Senate after the resignation of Alejandro Gertz Manero. The official stands out among a list of 43 candidates registered at the end of last week, where only other names linked to the ruling party emerged, such as former Undersecretary of the Ministry of the Interior, Ricardo Peralta Saucedo, or the former candidate for the position of Court Minister, Cesar Mario Gutierrez Priego.
Candidate registration closes on Sunday at 1:00 pm. With 43 names, among them, above all, former local government officials and political officials in Morena, such as former federal representative Hamlet Almaguer, current Senate Majority Counsel, as well as several former candidates for positions in the judiciary who were not elected on June 10.
Godoy is the highest-ranking official in the prosecutor’s office’s profile list. Among the applicants, only two names are lawyers with academic experience and recognized civil society experience: Luis Manuel Pérez de Acha, an expert in tax law who until 2019 was a member of the Citizens’ Participation Commission of the National Anti-Corruption System, and Jorge Nader Corey, an academic and former member of the Citizens’ Council of the Mexico City Public Prosecutor’s Office.
The list announced by the Senate of the Republic on Monday, in which there are only six women, will be purged by the Political Coordination Council in the next few hours, sending ten personal files to President Claudia Sheinbaum, who in turn will submit a shortlist to the Senate (three names on the list), so that the plenary session can elect who will fill the position of FGR for the next nine years.
Morena and his allies have complete control over this process, as they have the qualified majority in the Senate necessary to approve the appointment, which will be processed in record time. The call was announced the same day Gertz-Manero left office and the appointment is scheduled to take place before Dec. 15, the day the Legislature’s current regular session ends.
The absence of other profiles that have begun to look like potential future prosecutors, such as former Minister Arturo Zaldivar, current coordinator of politics and government in the Presidency, paves the way for Ernestina Godoy, who only Thursday was appointed Prosecutor to monitor competence by the outgoing Prosecutor General, automatically making her in charge of the FGR Office.
Godoy was Prosecutor of Justice of Mexico City from 2018 to 2020 and then Prosecutor of the capital until January 2024, accompanying the administration of Claudia Sheinbaum as head of government. In 2024, she was elected as a senator, a position she held for less than a month, since she took over the presidency’s legal affairs in October.
Regarding her profile and chances of being appointed FGR President, President Sheinbaum said on Friday that it was up to the Senate to decide, but she did not spare praise for her collaborator. “She is an extraordinary woman, principled, honest, with many convictions, which she demonstrated when she was Mexico City’s prosecutor.”
In addition to Ernestina Godoy, registered on folio 185 in the list issued by the Senate, other names that stand out, given their closeness to 4T, are Ricardo Peralta Saucedo, Director of Customs at the beginning of Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s six-year term and Undersecretary of the Interior between 2020 and 2021, and César Mario Gutierrez. Preju, a former candidate for the position of Minister of the Supreme Court of Justice, who received 2.4 million votes in the judicial elections and came in seventh place on the list of male candidates.
Only five other women were registered in the process: Luz María Zarza, former candidate for the position of Minister of the Supreme Court for Press in the judicial elections; Maribel Bogiorges Beltran, former CDMX judge candidate; Sandra Luz Gonzalez Mogollon, a lawyer who was a candidate for the position of anti-corruption prosecutor in the state of Veracruz; Olimpia Griselda Puente Pineda, lawyer, and Myrna Lucía Grande Hernández, former official of the Citizens’ Security Secretariat of CDMX.
The list is completed by secondary profiles, such as Carlos Lídias Saavedra, former candidate for judge in Puebla; Manuel Ramírez Mandujano, Controller of the National Lottery; Felix Herrera Antonio, director of human rights in the government of Tabasco, or Miguel Nava Alvarado, former candidate for governor of Queretaro for the Progressive Social Networks Party.