Mexico has elected a woman as president for the first time in its history. Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo, a 61-year-old scientist, has won the elections with close to 59% of the votes, 31 points above her immediate rival, Xóchitl Gálvez, and with a higher percentage than the current president, Andrés, obtained in 2018. Manuel López Obrador. The victory, which comes accompanied by the absolute majority in the Senate and the qualified majority in the Chamber of Deputies, grants enormous power to the former head of Government of Mexico City and represents a boost to the political project that López Obrador began in 2014 and that, in light of these elections, has become the core force of Mexican politics. The victory also sends a clear signal of the strength of the left in the country against the continental advance of the extreme right.
Starting October 1, Sheinbaum will govern a nation that has lived six years under the hyper-leadership of López Obrador. The president, a deep connoisseur of the Mexican labyrinth, has had an omnipresent presence in political and institutional life and it is very difficult for his mark not to last. From the National Palace he has directed the agenda with continuous initiatives and coups de effect while harshly lambasting those he perceived as his enemies. He has been helped in controlling the story by an opposition that, determined to demonize any of his gestures, only amplified the controversies that he sowed daily in his morning press conferences. A failed strategy that has gotten worse when an attempt was made to present the elections as a plebiscite on the legacy of López Obrador, ignoring not only the high popular valuation of him, one of the highest on the continent, but also the specific weight of Sheinbaum.
The result of this fight has been the overwhelming victory of the left, whose candidate has garnered the largest vote in Mexican presidential history. On that point, López Obrador’s project has had an undoubted success, but it is no less true that it leaves a very polarized country. An example of this fracture is the harmful confrontation between the Executive and the Judiciary. It is the new president’s task to heal wounds and restart the machinery of institutional collaboration, an essential element to undertake what is possibly her greatest task: the fight against insecurity.
Sheinbaum has in his favor the good economic moment that Mexico is going through and the solid progress made in the fight against poverty, two factors that have been decisive in his victory. Persevering in them will strengthen his credibility, as well as open himself to a presidency more based on management successes than on charisma. “We are going to govern for everyone, but for the good of all, first the poor,” she said in her first speech as president-elect, marking the main line of her project.
On the other hand, the time has come for the opposition represented by the alliance between PAN, PRI and PRD to stop announcing the end of the world daily and take the path of political realism. If they do not do so, they run the risk that to their right, from the confines of the system, some disruptive phenomenon will emerge in the wake of Donald Trump, Javier Milei or Nayib Bukele.
Mexico has six years ahead of it with a head of state who comes to power backed by her political experience and a history of honesty. It is to be hoped that López Obrador keeps her promise (“I am going to retire with great pleasure,” she said this Monday) and leaves her way free. In a country bathed in blood and where poverty looms everywhere, Sheinbaum faces challenges important enough not to suffer internal interference. To face them successfully, she must join forces and be aware that, in addition to leading a political movement, she is the president of all Mexicans. The time has come for everyone to join forces for the good of Mexico.
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