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04-06-2024
MEXICO CITY: Claudia Sheinbaum has been elected as Mexico’s first woman president in an historic landslide win.
Mexico’s official electoral authority said preliminary results showed the 61-year-old former mayor of Mexico City winning between 58% and 60% of the vote in Sunday’s election.
That gives her a lead of about 30 percentage points over her main rival, businesswoman Xochitl Galvez.
Sheinbaum will replace her mentor, outgoing President Andrés Manuel Lopez Obrador, on 1 October.
Sheinbaum, a former energy scientist, has promised continuity, saying that she will continue to build on the “advances” made by Lopez Obrador, further building on the welfare programs which have made the outgoing president very popular but in her victory speech she also highlighted what has set this Mexican election apart from previous ones. She told cheering voters: “For the first time in the 200 years of the [Mexican] Republic, I will become the first woman president of Mexico.”
She said it was an achievement not just for her but for all women.
“I’ve said it from the start, this is not just about me getting [to the top office], it’s about all of us getting here.”
She added: “I won’t fail you.”
Sheinbaum also thanked her rival, Xochitl Galvez, who has conceded victory.
Prior to running for president, Ms Sheinbaum was mayor of Mexico City, one of the most influential political positions in the country and one that is seen as paving the way for the presidency.
Sheinbaum, whose Jewish maternal grandparents immigrated to Mexico from Bulgaria fleeing the Nazis, had an illustrious career as a scientist before delving into politics. Her paternal grandparents hailed from Lithuania.
Both of her parents were scientists and Sheinbaum studied physics before going on to receive a doctorate in energy engineering.
She spent years at a renowned research lab in California studying Mexican energy consumption patterns and became an expert on climate change.
That experience and her student activism eventually earned her the position of secretary of the environment for Mexico City at the time when Andrés Manuel Lopez Obrador was mayor of the capital.
In 2018 she became the first female mayor of Mexico City, a post she held until 2023, when she stepped down to run for president.
The election, which pitted Sheinbaum against Galvez, has been described as a sea change for women in Mexico.
Edelmira Montiel, 87, said that she was grateful to be alive to see a woman elected to the top office.
“Before, we couldn’t even vote, and when you could, it was to vote for the person your husband told you to vote for. Thank God that has changed and I get to live it,” she told Reuters news agency, referring to the fact that women were only allowed to vote in national elections in 1953.
While the fact that the two front-runners were women was widely celebrated, the campaign was marred by violent attacks.
As well as a new president, voters were also electing all members of Mexico’s Congress and governors in eight states, the head of Mexico City’s government, and thousands of local officials.
And it was local candidates in particular who were targeted in the run-up to the vote.
The government says more than 20 were killed across Mexico, although other surveys put the total at 37. (Int’l Monitoring Desk)
