Mexico will have a female president for the first time: the progressive candidate Sheinbaum, Obrador’s heir, on her way to victory

Mexico will be led by a woman for the first time: Claudia Sheinbaum, heir to the current president Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador and standard-bearer of the progressive platform which includes the National Regeneration Movement (Morena), the Labor Party (Pt) and the Green Ecologist Party (Pvem). The results of the pre-election polls are indeed […]

To lead the Mexico will be a woman for the first time: Claudia Sheinbaum, heir of the current president Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador and flag bearer of the platform progressive which includes the National Regeneration Movement (Morena), the Labor Party (Pt) and the Green Ecologist Green Party (Pvem). The results of surveys pre-election are in fact confirmed by the estimates of quick counting published by the National Electoral Institute, which gives her between 58.3% and 60.7% of the votes. The result must be confirmed by bare of ballots, but Sheinbaum reported that opponents already have recognized his victory. “We have shown that Mexico is a democratic country with peaceful elections,” she said. In the Zocalo, the main square of Mexico City, they are finishing assembling the podium from which the winner will speak, in a historic turning point for one of the most macho and with the highest number of feminicides in the world.

They were called to vote 98 million voters in 170 thousand polling stations distributed over an area almost seven times larger than Italy. The weeks of the electoral campaign were marked by a trail of blood: at least thirty murders of candidates for municipal elections: a spiral of violence that forced the suspension of voting in the municipalities of Chicomuselo and Pantelho (in Chiapas), with 222 seats (distributed in eleven states) remained closed due to security problems and 120 thousand voters left out.

Sheinbaum, “daughter of ’68” as she defines herself in a documentary where she tells her story in first person, aims to live up to the result of July 6, 2018, when Lopez Obrador obtained a clear victory with 53.19%. of preferences and 63.42% of citizen participation. In her closing event, the former mayor promised continuity, recalling that “with thehonesty and support for those who have less, we reach the social justice and you get results.” But they weigh on Obrador’s management 50 thousand disappeared and over 180 thousand victims of murders (an average of 92 per day) registered between December 2018 and April 2024: a record in a country where crime cartels drug they compete for territory and are increasingly embracing the profitable business of migrants, with flows that last year approached 800 thousand entries, an increase of 77% compared to 2022.

A flaw, that of security, which the candidate of the opposition alliance pointed the finger at Xóchitl Gálvez, in the running with 36% of support according to the polls, supported by a coalition made up of the National Action Party (Pan; right), the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI; centre-left) and the Democratic Revolution Party (Prd; centre-left) . In her program, the senator of indigenous origin proposed building a maximum security mega-prison (in the style of the one wanted by Nayib Bukele in El Salvador) and during the last TV debate she accused her opponent of being “the candidate of the narcos”, probably taking inspiration from the accusations of an alleged two million dollar loan from Sinaloa Cartel at Lopez Obrador’s 2006 election campaign.