MEXICO
What’s behind Claudia Sheinbaum’s election victory?
By AFP
June 3, 2024
Claudia Sheinbaum is a pragmatic scientist by training who had several crises thrown at her as both a local politician and Mexico City mayor
By AFP
June 3, 2024
Claudia Sheinbaum is a pragmatic scientist by training who had several crises thrown at her as both a local politician and Mexico City mayor
- Copyright AFP Sachin KUMAR
Jean ARCE
Former Mexico City mayor Claudia Sheinbaum became the first woman to be elected president of the Latin American nation on Monday.
In October, the 61-year-old will replace President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, who enjoys an approval rating of more than 60 percent, largely thanks to his social programs for poorer Mexicans.
Here are some of the keys to Sheinbaum’s victory, according to analysts.
– Intelligence, experience –
Sheinbaum is a pragmatic scientist by training who had several crises thrown at her as both a local politician and Mexico City mayor, including a devastating earthquake, the Covid-19 pandemic and a deadly metro accident.
Supporters and critics alike recognize her intelligence and commitment to the left-wing ideals at the center of Lopez Obrador’s reform agenda.
Sheinbaum’s popularity “can in part be attributed to her intelligence and sharpness, her commitment to popular issues such as renewable energy and education, and her experience in leading Mexico City’s government,” said Michael Shifter, an expert at the Inter-American Dialogue think tank in Washington.
– Loyalty to Lopez Obrador –
Sheinbaum repeatedly told voters that she would follow the same path as Lopez Obrador, an anti-establishment leftist who won a landslide victory in 2018 in a country fed up with corruption, crime and poverty.
“It was an easy-to-understand, strong message that, through repetition and discipline, really managed to get through,” said academic Carlos Bravo Regidor.
Sheinbaum also benefited from the extensive network of the ruling Morena party, as well as the support of state machinery.
Since decades of dominance by the Institutional Revolutionary Party ended in 2000, “Morena has probably become the most successful party model at the national level,” said Gustavo Urbina, an academic at the College of Mexico.
But it is premature to talk about a new era of hegemony, experts said.
Founded in 2014, Morena is still a young party whose strength has been largely based on loyalty to Lopez Obrador, widely known by his initials AMLO.
“The president continues to fulfill a symbolic, moral and decision-making role that is fundamental,” Urbina said.
While Sheinbaum won an internal party poll to represent Morena, she was always seen as the outgoing president’s favorite.
“AMLO supporters trust his judgement and have rallied around his handpicked successor,” Shifter said.
– Unpopular opposition –
The unpopularity of the traditional Mexican parties — the centrist PRI, the right-wing PAN and the leftist PRD — was a major disadvantage for the main opposition candidate, Xochitl Galvez.
“They have a very bad reputation,” Bravo Regidor said.
“That was a burden that greatly hindered Xochitl’s potential,” he added.
In contrast, Morena, of which Lopez Obrador and Sheinbaum are co-founders, is seen more positively by voters as “relatively new and different,” Bravo Regidor said.
The opposition’s “big mistake” was not paying attention to the “real, current and genuine discontent” of many Mexicans, said writer and analyst Jorge Zepeda Patterson.
Instead, Lopez Obrador’s opponents sought to underline problems such as violence or difficulties accessing healthcare.
Faced with such an approach, “people will say, ‘maybe, but at least they’re trying,’ while the traditional parties don’t even try,” Zepeda Patterson said.
Mexico's president-elect moves to reassure nervous investors
Mexico City (AFP) – Mexican president-elect Claudia Sheinbaum's team reassured investors Tuesday that she would ensure the stability of Latin America's second-biggest economy, after her landslide election win rattled financial markets.
Issued on: 04/06/2024 -
Mexico City (AFP) – Mexican president-elect Claudia Sheinbaum's team reassured investors Tuesday that she would ensure the stability of Latin America's second-biggest economy, after her landslide election win rattled financial markets.
Issued on: 04/06/2024 -
Claudia Sheinbaum celebrates her victory in Mexico's presidential election
© CARL DE SOUZA / AFP/File
The country's stock market dropped six percent the day after Sunday's election as investors worried that the left-wing candidate's crushing victory would make it easier to push through reforms potentially damaging to the economy and business.
Sheinbaum's first cabinet appointment was asking Finance Minister Rogelio Ramirez de la O to stay on when she becomes Mexico's first woman president on October 1.
In a video published on social media, she pledged to "act with dialogue, harmony and great responsibility."
It was a message reinforced Tuesday by Ramirez de la O, who assured investors that the new government would be committed to "macroeconomic stability" and "fiscal prudence."
"Our project is based on financial discipline, respecting the autonomy of the (central) Bank of Mexico, adherence to the rule of law and facilitating national and foreign private investment," he said.
The stock market rebounded by more than three percent while the peso steadied after falling four percent against the dollar on Monday.
'Unequal competition'
Sheinbaum, a former Mexico City mayor and key ruling party figure, won around 59 percent of the votes with more than 95 percent of ballots counted, according to the National Electoral Institute.
That was 31 percentage points ahead of her main opposition rival Xochitl Galvez, who won around 28 percent, after a particularly violent election season that saw more than two dozen local candidates murdered.
The ruling party and its allies were projected to win a two-thirds supermajority in the lower house of Congress -- and possibly the Senate as well.
Galvez, who conceded defeat after initial results were announced, complained Monday that the opposition had faced "unequal competition" in the election "against the entire state apparatus dedicated to favoring its candidate."
She expressed confidence in the official results but vowed to challenge the outcome, without specifying how, declaring: "This doesn't end here."
Outgoing President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador defended the election won by his political protege as "the cleanest and freest election in history."
Controversial reforms
Sheinbaum owes much of her popularity to Lopez Obrador, a fellow leftist and mentor who has an approval rating of more than 60 percent but is only allowed to serve one term due to Mexico's presidential term limits.
His opponents accuse him of seeking to undermine Mexico's democratic institutions in his attempts to reform the justice system.
One of the proposed constitutional changes -- which require the approval of two-thirds of Congress -- is for Supreme Court judges to be chosen by popular vote.
With legislators expected to reconvene on September 1, Lopez Obrador could have time to pass some of his more controversial reforms before leaving office, the political risk consultancy EMPRA noted.
Lopez Obrador "will de facto remain as his party's political strategist" and "maintain a strong influence over Sheinbaum's government, at least during the first half of her term," it said.
One of the main challenges facing Sheinbaum along with security and relations with the neighboring United States is a fiscal deficit that the International Monetary Fund expects to hit 5.9 percent this year.
The credit ratings agency S&P Global Ratings said on Tuesday that it "doesn't believe that the new administration is likely to materially change the country's fiscal, monetary or trade policies."
"Like previous administrations, the country's new leadership will face the challenge of maintaining macroeconomic stability while meeting public expectations of better living standards and more public services," it said.
© 2024 AFP
The country's stock market dropped six percent the day after Sunday's election as investors worried that the left-wing candidate's crushing victory would make it easier to push through reforms potentially damaging to the economy and business.
Sheinbaum's first cabinet appointment was asking Finance Minister Rogelio Ramirez de la O to stay on when she becomes Mexico's first woman president on October 1.
In a video published on social media, she pledged to "act with dialogue, harmony and great responsibility."
It was a message reinforced Tuesday by Ramirez de la O, who assured investors that the new government would be committed to "macroeconomic stability" and "fiscal prudence."
"Our project is based on financial discipline, respecting the autonomy of the (central) Bank of Mexico, adherence to the rule of law and facilitating national and foreign private investment," he said.
The stock market rebounded by more than three percent while the peso steadied after falling four percent against the dollar on Monday.
'Unequal competition'
Sheinbaum, a former Mexico City mayor and key ruling party figure, won around 59 percent of the votes with more than 95 percent of ballots counted, according to the National Electoral Institute.
That was 31 percentage points ahead of her main opposition rival Xochitl Galvez, who won around 28 percent, after a particularly violent election season that saw more than two dozen local candidates murdered.
The ruling party and its allies were projected to win a two-thirds supermajority in the lower house of Congress -- and possibly the Senate as well.
Galvez, who conceded defeat after initial results were announced, complained Monday that the opposition had faced "unequal competition" in the election "against the entire state apparatus dedicated to favoring its candidate."
She expressed confidence in the official results but vowed to challenge the outcome, without specifying how, declaring: "This doesn't end here."
Outgoing President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador defended the election won by his political protege as "the cleanest and freest election in history."
Controversial reforms
Sheinbaum owes much of her popularity to Lopez Obrador, a fellow leftist and mentor who has an approval rating of more than 60 percent but is only allowed to serve one term due to Mexico's presidential term limits.
His opponents accuse him of seeking to undermine Mexico's democratic institutions in his attempts to reform the justice system.
One of the proposed constitutional changes -- which require the approval of two-thirds of Congress -- is for Supreme Court judges to be chosen by popular vote.
With legislators expected to reconvene on September 1, Lopez Obrador could have time to pass some of his more controversial reforms before leaving office, the political risk consultancy EMPRA noted.
Lopez Obrador "will de facto remain as his party's political strategist" and "maintain a strong influence over Sheinbaum's government, at least during the first half of her term," it said.
One of the main challenges facing Sheinbaum along with security and relations with the neighboring United States is a fiscal deficit that the International Monetary Fund expects to hit 5.9 percent this year.
The credit ratings agency S&P Global Ratings said on Tuesday that it "doesn't believe that the new administration is likely to materially change the country's fiscal, monetary or trade policies."
"Like previous administrations, the country's new leadership will face the challenge of maintaining macroeconomic stability while meeting public expectations of better living standards and more public services," it said.
© 2024 AFP
AlterNet
June 3, 2024
Presidential candidate Claudia Sheinbaum of ''Sigamos Haciendo Historia'' gives a speech after the first results released by the election authorities show that she leads the polls by wide margin after the presidential election at Zocalo Square on June 03, 2024 in Mexico City, Mexico. According to the Instituto Nacional Electoral (INE) over 100 million people were allowed to vote on the 2024 Presidential Election in Mexico. Claudia Sheinbaum of 'Sigamos Haciendo Historia' coalition will become the first woman president of Mexico. (Photo by Manuel Velasquez/Getty Images)
An apparent language barrier led several English speakers on Monday to mistakenly claim Mexico’s first female president is “a less Jewish Jew” after she thanked her husband for accompanying her to the polls.
Monday, Mexican citizens elected Claudia Sheinbaum, a member of the leftist Morena party, as the nation’s first female president. According to the New York Times, Sheinbaum, a physicist and former mayor of Mexico City, “won a larger share of the vote than any other presidential candidate in decades, and her party and its allies are within reach of claiming big enough majorities in Congress to enact constitutional changes that have alarmed the opposition.”
Sheinbaum will be predominantly-Catholic Mexico’s first Jewish president. The president-elect has previously described her childhood as secular, telling Enlace Judío, a Mexican Jewish organization, “I grew up without religion.”
"That’s how my parents raised me,: Sheinbaum said in 2018. "But obviously the culture, that’s in your blood.”
According to NBC News, Sheinbaum’s “maternal grandparents were Jews who immigrated to Mexico from Bulgaria before the Holocaust, while her paternal grandparents had fled from Lithuania in the 1920s. Sheinbaum's parents were born in Mexico.”
“While campaigning, Sheinbaum said she considers herself a woman of faith but is not religiously affiliated; perhaps that's why there has been relatively little discussion about her becoming Mexico's first Jewish president,” NBC News reports.
In a Sunday post, Sheinbaum thanked her husband Jesús María Tarriba, writing, “gracias a Jesús, mi esposo, por acompañarme,” which translates to, “thank you to Jesús, my husband, for accompanying me.”
Scam Economy and Doomed podcast host Matt Binder on Monday noted several English speakers appeared to conflate the name Jesús with Jesus Christ, using their confusion to question Sheinbaum’s Jewish bona fides.
“This is the funniest thing happening on here right now: people claiming the newly elected president of Mexico isn’t really Jewish because she thanked Jesus (she thanked Jesús, her husband),” Binder wrote in a tweet.
Indeed, Binder posted several examples of people questioning Sheinbaum’s Jewish identity including someone who claimed they’ve “never seen a less Jewish Jew than this.”
“Important to note that [Sheinbaum] is not involved in the Jewish community and thanked Jesus for her victory,” Democratic Majority for Israel co-chair Todd Richmond claimed.
Amherst College Latin American and Latino culture professor Ilan Stavans, who is Mexican and Jewish, defended Sheinbaum’s Jewish identity in an interview with NBC News.
“Sheinbaum, whose descendants immigrated to Mexico escaping poverty and antisemitism, including the Holocaust, grew up in a secular, science-driven household,” Stavans said. “She doesn’t perform her Jewish identity in public.”
View the tweets click this link.
June 3, 2024
Presidential candidate Claudia Sheinbaum of ''Sigamos Haciendo Historia'' gives a speech after the first results released by the election authorities show that she leads the polls by wide margin after the presidential election at Zocalo Square on June 03, 2024 in Mexico City, Mexico. According to the Instituto Nacional Electoral (INE) over 100 million people were allowed to vote on the 2024 Presidential Election in Mexico. Claudia Sheinbaum of 'Sigamos Haciendo Historia' coalition will become the first woman president of Mexico. (Photo by Manuel Velasquez/Getty Images)
An apparent language barrier led several English speakers on Monday to mistakenly claim Mexico’s first female president is “a less Jewish Jew” after she thanked her husband for accompanying her to the polls.
Monday, Mexican citizens elected Claudia Sheinbaum, a member of the leftist Morena party, as the nation’s first female president. According to the New York Times, Sheinbaum, a physicist and former mayor of Mexico City, “won a larger share of the vote than any other presidential candidate in decades, and her party and its allies are within reach of claiming big enough majorities in Congress to enact constitutional changes that have alarmed the opposition.”
Sheinbaum will be predominantly-Catholic Mexico’s first Jewish president. The president-elect has previously described her childhood as secular, telling Enlace Judío, a Mexican Jewish organization, “I grew up without religion.”
"That’s how my parents raised me,: Sheinbaum said in 2018. "But obviously the culture, that’s in your blood.”
According to NBC News, Sheinbaum’s “maternal grandparents were Jews who immigrated to Mexico from Bulgaria before the Holocaust, while her paternal grandparents had fled from Lithuania in the 1920s. Sheinbaum's parents were born in Mexico.”
“While campaigning, Sheinbaum said she considers herself a woman of faith but is not religiously affiliated; perhaps that's why there has been relatively little discussion about her becoming Mexico's first Jewish president,” NBC News reports.
In a Sunday post, Sheinbaum thanked her husband Jesús María Tarriba, writing, “gracias a Jesús, mi esposo, por acompañarme,” which translates to, “thank you to Jesús, my husband, for accompanying me.”
Scam Economy and Doomed podcast host Matt Binder on Monday noted several English speakers appeared to conflate the name Jesús with Jesus Christ, using their confusion to question Sheinbaum’s Jewish bona fides.
“This is the funniest thing happening on here right now: people claiming the newly elected president of Mexico isn’t really Jewish because she thanked Jesus (she thanked Jesús, her husband),” Binder wrote in a tweet.
Indeed, Binder posted several examples of people questioning Sheinbaum’s Jewish identity including someone who claimed they’ve “never seen a less Jewish Jew than this.”
“Important to note that [Sheinbaum] is not involved in the Jewish community and thanked Jesus for her victory,” Democratic Majority for Israel co-chair Todd Richmond claimed.
Amherst College Latin American and Latino culture professor Ilan Stavans, who is Mexican and Jewish, defended Sheinbaum’s Jewish identity in an interview with NBC News.
“Sheinbaum, whose descendants immigrated to Mexico escaping poverty and antisemitism, including the Holocaust, grew up in a secular, science-driven household,” Stavans said. “She doesn’t perform her Jewish identity in public.”
View the tweets click this link.
