Mexico: In 2024, Mexico will elect its first female president
By Ahmad Hadizat Omayoza, Mamos Nigeria
After women were chosen as candidates by the governing Morena party and the opposition coalition, Mexico will almost certainly have its first female president in 2024.
Claudia Sheinbaum, a former mayor of Mexico City, was named Morena’s candidate on Wednesday, despite Marcelo Ebrard, the runner-up,’s last-minute denunciation of the procedure and demand that it be reworked.
Sheinbaum is a climate scientist who has become a politician. It was widely believed that Sheinbaum would be the choice of president Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who cannot run for office again.
A banner that reads: At the Zocalo Square in Mexico City, “Abortion Out of the Penal Code” is hung from a building on International Women’s Day.
She has positioned herself as a continuity candidate and stands to gain from López Obrador’s ongoing popularity and the support of the state apparatus during the forthcoming campaign.
Up to this point, Morena had appeared to be guaranteed of triumph in the June 2024 races, however the emotional rise as of late of representative Xóchitl Gálvez as the resistance competitor has overturned assumptions.
Gálvez is a businesswoman who became a senator in 2018 and has captivated the media with her aspirational story of growing up in Hidalgo state with an Indigenous father and a mestizo mother before pursuing public education and politics.
Within a matter of months, Gálvez has advanced to become the candidate for the PAN, PRI, and PRD, the country’s three oldest mainstream parties, in a broad opposition coalition.
A series of polls were used to select Sheinbaum and Gálvez in order to demonstrate greater public participation and transparency than in the past, when presidents chose their successors by hand. However, neither procedure was successful.
Due to the withdrawal of another candidate, Beatriz Paredes, the opposition coalition never carried out the process’s final consultation, giving the lead candidate, Gálvez, the nomination.
In the meantime, Morena’s second-place finisher Ebrard has accused the party of favoritism toward Sheinbaum. He announced on Wednesday that his team had discovered anomalies in 14% of the ballots in the national poll Morena conducted to select a candidate.
Ebrard has ruled himself out of contention for Morena as a result of the fact that his requests to retry the procedure have been ignored.
In spite of Gálvez’s popularity, Sheinbaum remains the favorite to win the election, and it now appears almost certain that Mexico’s next president will be a woman for the first time in its history.
According to political analyst Carlos Ramrez, “She will have López Obrador’s support, but building her own narrative and forging her own image – that’s her first challenge.” He is well-liked and needed by her. Why depart from that? However, she must find a middle ground.
Ebrard’s exceptionally open difference is additionally an early indication of the difficulty Sheinbaum might face to keep up with attachment inside the Morena party once López Obrador leaves power.
“In under a year [López Obrador] will go to his farm in Palenque, and he is on a basic level what is keeping them generally intact,” said Vanessa Romero Rocha, a political expert.
In the meantime, it remains to be seen whether Gálvez can turn her media attention into nationwide support for the election. According to the most recent data we have, “48 percent of the population still do not know who she is,” Romero Rocha stated.
Gálvez faces the possibility of being accused of being backed by a despised corporate aristocracy because she is the candidate of Mexico’s traditional parties. Yet, regardless of having been in governmental issues for quite a long time – as chairman of a district in Mexico City prior to turning into a representative – she has not been polluted by defilement outrages.
“Gálvez requirements to sell herself as an untouchable, a figure of common society, yet without losing the help of the party structures – she wants them to win,” said Ramírez. ” That will require careful balancing.”
Gálvez has supported progressive policies on LGBTQ+ rights, the environment, and abortion despite serving as a senator for the conservative PAN party.
A position of this kind regarding social justice may reduce Morena’s support, but it may also alienate the more conservative voters on whom the PAN relies.
Notwithstanding this, the resistance consider Gálvez to be their best desire to take on Morena, having lost a large number of decisions since López Obrador’s avalanche win in 2018.
Romero Rocha stated, “These political parties comprehend what the Mexican people want.” At the national level, López Obrador has recently received approval ratings of 60%: Swimming in the opposite direction is foolish.
