During the last hours, voices multiplied pointing out that Scherer had presented his resignation to President López Obrador on Tuesday, without him having yet accepted it.
But the legal advisor, one of the president’s closest collaborators, attended this Wednesday the solemn act of the National Palace in which López Obrador presented the activities report of his third year in office before his cabinet.
The architect of the president’s legal strategy was seated in the last row of the small hall of the National Palace where the event was held, behind the president’s spokesman, Jesús Ramírez Cuevas.
Julio Scherer Ibarra, son of the prestigious journalist Julio Scherer García, founder of Proceso magazine, was one of López Obrador’s campaign coordinators in the 2018 elections, after which he became his legal adviser.
In recent weeks, his image has been damaged by his failed initiative to extend the mandate of the president of the Supreme Court, Arturo Zaldívar, and by the internal crisis of the Electoral Tribunal that led to a revolt of the magistrates against the president of the organ , José Luis Vargas, close to Scherer.
Scherer was the architect of López Obrador’s legal initiatives that ended up in court, such as the laws to prioritize public energy companies or the convening of the consultation on prosecuting the country’s former presidents.
During the midterm election campaign last June, he caused controversy by suggesting that the president had to “cover his mouth” with journalists because the National Electoral Institute had forbidden him to comment on the elections, words for which he later apologized.
The rumors of his resignation jumped on the eve of the presentation of the report for the third year of the López Obrador government, which marks the halfway point of his term.
At least eleven of the ministers and collaborators appointed in 2018 have resigned or changed positions during these almost three years of presidency.
The last was last week: the Secretary of the Interior, Olga Sánchez Cordero, one of the most prominent figures in the cabinet, who left the Government to preside over the Senate.
