Sheinbaum of Mexico set to become the country’s first female president

As the incoming president of Mexico, Claudia Sheinbaum is poised to emerge victorious, carrying on the legacy of her mentor, outgoing leader Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, whose appeal to the underprivileged has been a major factor in her success.

Climate scientist and former Mexico City mayor Sheinbaum was predicted by at least five exit polls to win the president.

Parametria, a pollster, predicted that the candidate of the ruling MORENA party would win a landslide 56% of the vote. According to Parametria, Xochitl Galvez, the opposition candidate, would receive 30% of the vote.

With 5% of the vote counted, preliminary results are beginning to come in, showing Sheinbaum ahead with 59% of the vote to Galvez’s 29%. Galvez has refused to back down and advised her followers to wait for the official findings.

Mexico, which is home to the second-largest Roman Catholic population in the world and is well-known for its macho culture, is taking a significant stride forward with Sheinbaum’s impending triumph. For years, Mexico has promoted more traditional values and roles for women.

Sheinbaum’s victory in a general election would make history for women in the US, Mexico, or Canada.

In Tlaxcala, the smallest state in Mexico, 87-year-old Edelmira Montiel, a supporter of Sheinbaum, remarked, “I never imagined that one day I would vote for a woman.”

Mexico’s Political Landscape and Sheinbaum’s Historic Victory

“In the past, voting was prohibited to us, and when it was, you had to cast your ballot for the candidate your spouse advised you to support. I get to live it, thank God things has changed,” Montiel continued.

Sheinbaum faces a challenging future. She has to strike a compromise between taking over a big budget deficit and slow economic development, and her pledge to expand popular welfare programmes.

She promised to increase security, but she hasn’t provided many details. Additionally, the election—which saw 38 candidates killed—was the bloodiest in Mexico’s recent history, which has exacerbated the country’s severe security issues. Many commentators claim that during Lopez Obrador’s administration, organised crime groups increased and strengthened their power.

The deaths of two persons at polling places in the state of Puebla also clouded Sunday’s election results. Although the homicide rate has been gradually declining, more people—over 185,000—have died under Lopez Obrador’s presidency than under any other in Mexico’s recent history.

“Unless she commits to making a game-changing level of investment in improving policing and reducing impunity, Sheinbaum will likely struggle to achieve a significant improvement in overall levels of security,” according to Nathaniel Parish Flannery, an independent political risk analyst for Latin America.

An important position in the nation, the mayor of Mexico City is held every four years, and the ruling MORENA party has declared its candidate the winner; however, the opposition has challenged this and asserts that its nominee prevailed.

As per Mario Delgado, the leader of the party, it seems like MORENA will have a simple majority in Congress instead of a two-thirds majority, which would enable the party to advance constitutional revisions with no resistance.

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