Saturday 1 December 2012

Mexico has a new president, cabinet

Felipe Calderón formally handed over the Mexican presidency to Enrique Peña Nieto of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) in a short ceremony in the National Palace in Mexico City, enacted just after midnight on 1 December, CNN reported. Peña Nieto later had members of his Security Cabinet sworn in at the National Palace. He expressed satisfaction then at the completion of an "orderly, legal and transparent" transition of power. Calderón hosted a farewell dinner hours before the handover, while Peña Nieto was to have a more grandiose inauguration as President of Mexico later on 1 December. On 30 November he presented his cabinet to the public, CNNMéxico reported. Among its most prominent members: Miguel Ángel Osorio Chong, a 48-year-old lawyer and formerly general coordinator for Policy and Security in Peña Nieto's transitional team became the interior minister (Secretario de gobernación), and José Antonio Meade Kuribreña foreign minister. Meade was the finance minister since September of the outgoing conservative government, and previously served as its energy minister. General Salvador Cienfuegos Zepeda was the new Defence Minister and Admiral Vidal Francisco Soberón Sanz the Navy Minister, heading a body closely involved so far in the war on drug cartels. Manuel Mondragón y Kalb was made minister for Public Security and Institutional Planning, though it was not clear how long this post would last, given Peña Nieto's plans to eliminate the Public Security or police ministry created by Calderón. Mondragón was a prominent member of the Mexico City government under its outgoing leftist mayor Marcelo Ebrard and the capital's police chief in 2008-December 2012. Luis Videgaray Caso was the new finance minister: a close collaborator of Peña Nieto, he served with him when Peña Nieto was governor of Estado de México, as his election campaign manager and then general coordinator of his transitional team in July-December 2012. Female ministers included: the physician Mercedes Juan López in Health, Claudia Ruiz Massieu Salinas in Tourism, and the leftist Rosario Robles Berlanga in Social Development.