By David Alire Garcia
MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – Claudia Sheinbaum basked in the glow of a resounding presidential victory on Sunday night, thanking supporters who gathered in the capital’s iconic Zocalo square shortly after 1 a.m. to applaud Mexico’s first female president.
For months, the Nobel Prize-winning physicist turned mayor of Mexico City was the clear favorite in the race to succeed the popular outgoing president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, his mentor and chief political benefactor for nearly a quarter of century.
Sheinbaum now faces the task of charting his own path, including the delicate balancing act of advancing the state-centered economic policies of the leftist López Obrador, especially with regard to natural resources such as oil and minerals, while time that it makes progress on issues seen as its weaknesses, such as the environment and crime.
The ruling party’s standard-bearer, MORENA, will also face a growing budget deficit, complicating its own spending plans.
Preliminary results from the INE electoral authority showed Sheinbaum ahead of his main opposition rival, Xochitl Galvez, by about 60% to 28%.
“I am humbled and grateful,” said the 61-year-old, who will also make history as the first president of Jewish heritage to lead the overwhelmingly Roman Catholic country.
“And I won’t disappoint you,” she added with a wide smile.
Sheinbaum’s triumph caps an unlikely four-decade climb that took the daughter of academic activists to the height of power in the Spanish-speaking world’s most populous nation, for decades known as a socially conservative bastion with a macho culture.
“It took many years to get here,” said Francisco Labastida, a veteran Mexican politician from the once-dominant Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, who was presidential runner-up in 2000.
Labastida said he was especially proud that Mexico achieved the feat before its northern neighbor, the United States, which has never had a female president.
Sheinbaum’s ability to separate himself from López Obrador once he takes office in October is “the big unknown,” Labastida added, as the famously stubborn leader would likely try to impose his own vision despite his pledge to withdraw to his ranch in tropical southern Mexico.
MAKING HISTORY AGAIN
Six years ago, Sheinbaum made history as the first elected mayor of Mexico City. Until she left office last year to run for president, Sheinbaum was known as a data-driven manager, winning plaudits for halving the megacity’s homicide rate, increasing security spending on an expanded police force and higher salaries.
She has vowed to replicate the strategy across Mexico, where powerful drug cartels exert widespread influence.
But Sheinbaum will be faced with a wide budget deficit, which is expected to end 2024 at almost 6% of gross domestic product, according to the International Monetary Fund.
However, the new leader pledged to take advantage of López Obrador’s social generosity, which included increasing old-age pensions and scholarships for young people.
Although he expressed interest in attracting private investment to develop renewable energy projects, he also committed to ensuring the dominance of Mexico’s state-owned oil and energy companies, while renouncing any privatizations.
In 1995, Sheinbaum earned his doctorate in energy engineering from the National Autonomous University of Mexico, and then pursued a teaching and academic career, including a stint on the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which later shared the Nobel Peace Prize with former -Vice President of the USA. President Al Gore.
She began her political career in 2000, when López Obrador, then the newly elected mayor of Mexico City, tapped her to be his environmental chief in charge of improving air quality, highways and public transportation in the polluted capital.
Sheinbaum served as the main spokesperson for López Obrador’s first presidential campaign in 2006, which he narrowly lost.
In 2015, she was elected to manage Mexico City’s largest neighborhood, Tlalpan, and became mayor of the capital three years later, the same year her mentor’s third run for president ended in a landslide victory.
Paula Sofia Vázquez, a political analyst based in Mexico City, suggested that Sheinbaum’s command of the country’s armed forces would constitute an early test, as López Obrador has greatly expanded the military’s mandate for key economic policies, including major oil projects. transport and construction.
“It seems to me that this is a challenge that no male president would face,” she said, arguing that military culture can tend toward misogyny.
Vazquez highlighted at least one more factor that would likely make Sheinbaum’s job even more difficult.
“Empathy is required from women. Women must have a certain sensitivity towards problems that men are not obliged to have,” she said. “Results are demanded of men, while women are required to show results, but also a human touch.”
(Reporting by David Alire Garcia; Editing by Alex Richardson)
