Two women will contest the presidency of Mexico for the first time in 2024, after the former mayor of the capital Claudia Sheinbaum was proclaimed this Wednesday candidate of the leftist ruling party to face the opposition Xochitl Galvez.
Sheinbaum, a 61-year-old scientist, was the most voted in a polling process for the Morena party, the results of which were announced this Wednesday, to the jubilation of her supporters who shouted “president, president!”
“Today the people of Mexico decided,” said Sheinbaum, in her first message as a candidate, where she stressed that the unity of the party “is essential” in the face of the presidential elections and then that thehe former Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard, another of the applicants, was unaware of the validity of the process.
The former mayor achieved an average of 39.4% of the preferences, almost 14 percentage points above Ebrard, which was second with 25.8%.
(Also read: What changes in Mexico after the decriminalization of abortion throughout the country?)
They were followed by the deputy with a license from the Labor Party (PT) Gerardo Fernández Noroña (12.2%), the former Secretary of the Interior Adán Augusto López (10%), the former leader of the Morena senators Ricardo Monreal (6.5% ), and the senator with a license from the Green Party (PVEM) Manuel Velasco 6.3%.
Ebrard alleged irregularities in the polls and maintained that by ignoring his claims the party removed him from the process.
It also opened the possibility of seeking the presidency by another path. “There is going to be a president of the Republic!” Sheinbaum exclaimed at the end of his speech, after which she was hugged and applauded by the other four pre-candidates who accompanied her inauguration to which Ebrard did not appear.
By leading the five surveys carried out, Sheinbaum is “unquestionably” the chosen one, reported Alfonso Durazo, president of the National Council of Morena, party of president Andrés Manuel López Obrador.
Favorite since the beginning of the campaign, Sheinbaum will face Gálvez, a 60-year-old senator and businesswoman of indigenous origin on June 2, who last Sunday was anointed as a candidate for a coalition of opposition parties.
(You may be interested in: The new route that migrants would be using to cross the Darién)
For now, With no third candidate on the horizon, it will be the first time that two women are running for the presidency of this country. plagued by the violence of drug trafficking, a plague of femicides and with a long macho tradition.
On average, ten women are murdered every day in Mexico, the main trading partner of the United States and the second Latin American economy after Brazil, according to official data.
Who is Claudia Sheinbaum?
Born June 24, 1962, Sheinbaum was from the beginning the best placed in the preliminary polls and, among political circles, she was considered the favorite of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador to be the official candidate of the party that they both founded.
Wide defender of the “fourth transformation” of Mexico, as the president’s political project is called, she has become one of the most important political figures in the country.
“Mexico is ready for a president, for an astronaut, for an engineer. Mexican women have been ready for a long time,” said the capital’s ruler.
(You can read: US Embassy reactivates processing of important type of visa: can you apply?)
In recent months, she has traveled the country showing herself to be very close to the ideas of López Obrador and has avoided positioning herself in controversy and, despite the fact that her opponent Marcelo Ebrard positioned herself frontally as her greatest adversary, the now candidate stayed away from the confrontation.
His academic training was not political, as he studied Physics at the National Autonomous University of
Mexico (UNAM), in addition to a master’s degree in energy engineering and a doctorate in the same specialty.
Her approach to politics began in the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) – of which López Obrador was a presidential candidate on two occasions – to which she joined in 1989, but without participating in the internal structure or organisms.
In the year 2000 he joined the cabinet of López Obrador, when he was head of Government of the then Federal District. There she served as Secretary of the Environment and in 2006 she became the spokesperson for López Obrador’s first campaign for the presidency of Mexico.
(You can read: Exclusive: this will be the opening date of the Venezuelan consulates in Colombia)
In 2014, Sheinbaum resigned from the PRD to join the National Regeneration Movement.
In August 2017 After a survey, Sheinbaum achieved the candidacy to run for the head of government of Mexico City, who won in 2018 with 2.5 million votes and became the first woman in the history of the capital elected to the position.
Xóchitl Gálvez, the right-wing senator who challenges Amlo
Xóchitl Gálvez, a senator from the right-wing National Action Party (PAN), for her part, is an engineer of indigenous origin. She will be the presidential candidate of the opposition coalition Frente Amplio por México in the 2024 elections, a race in which she will try to make the most of her confrontations with the Mexican president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador.
Gálvez, 60, has been the opponent who has faced López Obrador most frontally, which has given him great visibility in public opinion that he will now try to use in his favor.
The most notorious clash occurred on June 12, when López Obrador ignored her when going to participate in one of his daily press conferences. A judge had granted her the right to reply after the president put some erroneous statements in her mouth, but they left her at the gates of the National Palace.
“There I understood that this president, instead of governing, locked himself in his palace, and does not listen to anyone, and I did get angry (angry), and I did say: we have to open it, and we are going to open it,” he said Thursday at a press conference.
“I’m going to be the next president of Mexico,” she remarked, “if you go, I’ll go.”
Of an Otomi father and a mestizo mother,
Gálvez went from living a humble childhood in the town of Tepatepec, in the state of Hidalgo (central Mexico), to studying computer engineering at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), where he specialized in robotics and artificial intelligence.
He then moved into the private sector, where he founded several technology companies. In 1999, the Davos Economic Forum recognized her as one of the 100 global leaders of the future, the first Mexican woman to do so.
Barely a year later, he jumped into politics at the hands of the recently elected President Vicente Fox (2000-2006). as head of the now extinct National Commission for the Development of Indigenous Peoples.
(Keep reading: The Police calculate that they will deliver the report on the Sancho case in mid-September)
Since then he has not separated from political life, the PAN or the causes of the native peoples, giving a social vision to his public work that has continued during this legislature, presiding over the Senate committee on indigenous affairs.
Before that, in 2010, she unsuccessfully tried to win the governorship of Hidalgo, and in 2015 she became head of the Miguel Hidalgo delegation, the internal demarcation of Mexico City.
For now, both coalitions have avoided presenting their representatives as official candidates, given that Mexican electoral law prevents the start of the official campaign period until March.
Sheinbaum leads Gálvez by 17 percentage points in a recent poll by the newspaper Reforma. And she has presented herself as the candidate for continuity, repeating almost word for word Amlo’s main promises, including ridding the country of corruption, increasing cash transfers to sectors of the population in need of support and improving the quality of Mexican life.
Thus, Sheinbaum will seek to retain power in the general elections next year. and he is in a position to benefit from the great popularity of López Obrador to launch his presidential campaign ahead of the June 2 vote.
INTERNATIONAL WRITING
*With AFP, Efe and Bloomberg
#Mexico #woman #president #contest #contest