“No les voy a defraudar! ” I will not let you down !
It was with this great promise that Claudia Sheinbaum assumed her new title as president-elect of Mexico in front of tens of thousands of voters who came to hear her in the central square of Mexico City, the Zócalo, on Sunday night see you Monday.
“Presidenta!” Presidenta! “, responded the crowd, who, in some 200 years, had never been able to use this word in the feminine form to describe the political reality of the large country of 128 million inhabitants.
This historic first surprises no one since we knew well before the start of the vote that a woman would be elected, the two main political parties having presented candidates.
We nevertheless let out a “¡ Oh, Dios mío!” » upon learning that Mme Sheinbaum had received between 58 and 60% of support, ahead of her main rival by 30 percentage points.
It is therefore with an extremely strong mandate that the left-wing politician will take the reins of the country, on 1er october. And the expectations for him are enormous. Apprehensions too. “His victory is symbolic and important, but eyes are on the coming weeks. Towards the transition process,” Françoise Montambeault, professor of political science and associate researcher at the Center for International Studies and Research at the University of Montreal (CERIUM), told me on Monday.
Since the start of the campaign, both his opposition and his supporters have presented Mme Sheinbaum as the runner-up to her predecessor, Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO), outgoing president and leading figure of the Movement for National Regeneration (Morena).
PHOTO HENRY ROMERO, REUTERS
Outgoing President Andrés Manuel López Obrador
It’s not very difficult to understand. On the one hand, we wanted to portray her as a puppet of the president contested for his authoritarian methods and the cult of personality that surrounds him. On the other hand, we wanted to take advantage of AMLO’s popularity rating which is close to 65%, enough to make the two other North American amigos, Joe Biden and Justin Trudeau, cry with envy.
The problem in all this is that Mme Sheinbaum will have to work hard to demonstrate that she is a leader in her own right. A rather thankless task, almost cliché, for a woman who reaches the highest position of power in her country.
Talk to Dilma Rousseff, the former president of Brazil, who has always been pursued by the shadow of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.
On Monday, a few hours after the announcement of the results of the election, Mr. Obrador hastened to announce that he will retire from political life on the day his mandate ends and will not play nice. -mother, a confirmation that her aura – real or imagined – risks sticking to the skin of her successor.
However, Claudia Sheinbaum’s professional and political career should speak for itself. Engineer and holder of a doctorate in environmental sciences, graduated from the National Autonomous University of Mexico as well as from Stanford University in California, Mme Sheinbaum was part of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) the year the organization shared the Nobel Peace Prize with Al Gore.
When, in 2011, AMLO created the Morena organization which would become a political party three years later, Claudia Sheinbaum was already there. It is also under the banner of Morena that she was elected head of government of Mexico City in 2018, the second most important position of power in Mexico, notes Françoise Montambeault. We are therefore far from talking about a crown princess!
Besides, it has gone a little under the radar, but it is a woman, Clara Brugada, who will now be in charge of the immense City of Mexico, one of the five largest metropolitan areas in the world, with its approximately 20 million citizens. “She comes from a different background than Claudia Sheinbaum, but they worked together on major infrastructure projects,” notes the political scientist who was recently in Mexico.
We will know quite quickly what the new president is up to since the projects that await her are immense and she will have to detail her approach and build the team that will support her. “For a long time in Mexico, the economy was the main issue and security came second. There, it’s reversed,” remarks Jorge Pantaleón, professor of anthropology at the University of Montreal, also affiliated with CERIUM.
The economy is doing relatively well. The peso is stable. Safety is THE challenge. During AMLO’s six-year term, there were 180,000 assassinations and disappearances. It is enormous.
Jorge Pantaleón, affiliated professor at CERIUM
In this area, the outgoing president is far from having shone. The same could be said of his predecessors Felipe Calderón and Enrique Peña Nieto, who saw the cartel war reach its climax from 2006. They also failed to stop the epidemic of violence against women which shakes the country.
Another big headache is that of migration. Mexico, which has seen more than 20 million of its citizens settle in the United States, is now a hub for migration from Asia, the Middle East, Africa and Latin America . The militarization of the country’s southern border during the mandate of President Obrador is far from having put an end to this influx and had the collateral damage of making the Mexican army a political force, notes the anthropologist.
There is another global challenge for which Mme Sheinbaum is better prepared than all the G20 heads of state combined. That of climate change and the energy transition to deal with it. His expertise will give him great credibility.
“His approach is very different from that of his predecessor. She speaks English, has lived in the United States and knows Anglo-Saxon culture. She will be much more comfortable in major international forums than President Obrador, who did not travel,” notes Louise Blais, former ambassador and deputy official representative of Canada to the United Nations.
His election is a great opportunity to seize for Canada, which must quickly strengthen its ties with Mexico, our continental cousin and essential trading partner. If Donald Trump is re-elected to the White House in November, Mr. Trump’s challengesme Sheinbaum will also be ours. We must not let each other down.