Quick counting of votes in Mexico shows that Sheinbaum, the candidate of outgoing President AMLO’s Left-wing MORENA party, has won between 58.3 percent and 60.7 percent of votes polled.
New Delhi: Mexico Sunday elected climate scientist Claudia Sheinbaum as its President in a double landmark for the country of nearly 130 million people — she is the first woman and the first Jewish person to be chosen as its head of state.
A PhD in energy engineering and a contributor to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 2007 report. The IPCC was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize that year. Sheinbaum, 61, previously served as head of government of Mexico City — a position equivalent to that of a state governor — between 2018 and 2023. Mexico City is one of the largest cities in North America, with a population of over 9 million people.
Sheinbaum will be the first Jewish leader of a predominantly Catholic country.
“For the first time in 200 years of the Republic, there will be a woman president and she will be transformative. Thanks to each and every Mexican. Today we demonstrate with our vote that we are a democratic people. I invite you to follow the transmission,” said Sheinbaum on the social media platform X after the results became clear.
According to the quick count of votes — a statistical sample estimating voting trends from the polling stations — Sheinbaum holds an irreversible lead of between 58.3 percent and 60.7 percent of the total votes polled. The leading opposition candidate, Xóchitl Gálvez, is estimated to have won between 26.6 percent and 28.6 percent of the total votes polled.
The final results will likely be available by 8 June, and the new president is due to take office from 1 October 2024. Over a 100 million people were eligible to vote in Sunday’s elections.
Sheinbaum stood on a ticket representing MORENA — Movimento Regeneración Nacional — the leftist party founded in 2011 by the charismatic outgoing president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO), who will exit office with a 60 percent approval rating.
Her closest rival was Xóchitl Gálvez, 60, a computer engineer who has founded
technology companies. She was named as one of the 100 global leaders of the future by the World Economic Forum in 1999.
Gálvez represented a coalition of parties including the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) and the National Action Party (PAN). The PRI, founded in 1929 held the presidency of Mexico for 71 years between 1929 and 2000. In 2012, the PRI returned to the presidency with the election of Enrique Peña Nieto. So far, traditional Mexican parties have found the MORENA juggernaut, built by López Obrador, difficult to beat.
Who is Sheinbaum?
Born to Jewish parents, Sheinbaum studied physics and then energy engineering, before pursuing her doctoral studies at the National Autonomous University of Mexico. Her father was a chemical engineer and her mother a cellular biologist.
When she was six years old, her parents took part in the 1968 protests against the rule of the PRI in Mexico. During the protests for democratic reforms that year, as many as 400 students were killed at one site by armed forces and paramilitary forces.
She played the guitar and did ballet in her early years. Her political career started in 2000, when López Obrador was elected head of government of Mexico City. Sheinbaum was made secretary of the environment in the city administration.
She later moved on from the role and became López Obrador’s spokesperson in his 2006 presidential campaign, which he lost. In 2018, she was elected as the first woman head of government of Mexico City, the same year López Obrador became the President of Mexico.
A staunch supporter of López Obrador’s leftist economic policies, she ran on a platform to continue his welfare policies and infrastructure projects. During his tenure, millions of people were lifted out of poverty and the minimum wage was doubled.
Her party, however, has been criticised for a weak record on the environment, with no promise to cut fossil fuel emissions and a promise to increase further investments into the state-owned petroleum company Petróleos Mexicanos (Pemex).
Sheinbaum has, however, promised to promote renewable energy as a part of her 100 commitments.
Taaza Khabar 