Santiago Creel of Mexico’s conservative National Action Party (PAN). Photo: Google

By MARK LORENZANA

The plenary session of Mexico’s Chamber of Deputies on Wednesday, Aug. 31, ratified the appointment of Santiago Creel as president of the board of directors of the legislative precinct of San Lázaro, while Alejandro Armenta was elected as president of the Mexican Senate.

Creel, of the conservative National Action Party (PAN), was elected unanimously as president of the Chamber of Deputies with 455 votes. Armenta, of Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s (AMLO) leftist National Regeneration Movement (Morena), received 65 majority votes in the Senate.

The rest of the Chamber of Deputies’ board of directors are composed of Morena’s Karta Yuritzi Almazán Burgos, and the PAN’s Nohemi Berenice Luna Ayala and Marcela Guerra Castillo of the centralist Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), who will sit as the first, second and third vice presidents of the board, respectively.

The secretaries of the board of directors include Morena’s Brenda Espinoza López, the PAN’s Sarai Núñez, the PRI’s Fuensanta Guadalupe Guerrero, María del Carmen Pinete Vargas of the Green Ecologist Party of Mexico (PVEM), Magdalena del Socorro Núñez Monreal of the Labor Party (PT), Jessica María Guadalupe Ortega de la Cruz of the Citizen’s Movement (MC) and María Macarena Chávez Flores of the left-leaning Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD).

“I am ready to face one of the most important challenges that I have had as a representative. I ask all of you for your cooperation and collaboration, for the good of this Chamber of Deputies,” Creel said. “I will seek to have a close collaboration with the coordinators of all the parliamentary groups.”

While Creel received a unanimous vote in Congress, Armenta needed three rounds of voting before being proclaimed Senate president. In the first round of voting, 10 senators left their ballots blank, while in the second round Armenta only received 60 votes, one shy of of the 61 required majority votes.