Mexico set to get first female president after ruling party names candidate

Mexico is all set to get its first female president as the country’s ruling party chose Claudia Sheinbaum as its candidate for next year’s presidential election.

The 61-year-old former Mexico City mayor is considered a close ally of President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, who won’t be able to get re-elected again.

She has been tipped to be the favourite among the candidates to helm the top post according to a national poll organised by the ruling leftist National Regeneration Movement (MORENA) party.

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“Today the Mexican people decided,” a smiling Sheinbaum told supporters to shouts of “president, president, president,” at a press conference where she was declared MORENA candidate, according to Reuters news agency.

“We will win in 2024,” Sheinbaum, aclimate scientist-turned-politician, said.

The major opposition coalition had already chosen another woman, Xóchitl Gálvez, a sitting senator in the Mexican Congress, as its standard-bearer.

Now, two women — Sheinbaum, a physicist and former university professor, and Gálvez, 60, a successful tech entrepreneur — are set to face off in an election scheduled for June 2 next year.

Internal poll compromised?

The nomination from MORENA came on Wednesday amidst a blow-up inside the party after Sheinbaum’s competitor Marcelo Ebrard alleged “faults” in the primary process even before final results were announced.

The former foreign minister sought a rerun of the internal polling which handed Sheinbaum her victory.“I never thought I would live [to see] something like this in my own party,” Ebrard wrote on social media platform X.

But party leaders were quick to defend the process.

"There is no incident that has affected the final result in a definitive manner," said Alfonso Durazo, president of Morena's national board, according to the AFP news agency.

"The result of this process is definitive."

In the internal polling, Sheinbaum got an average of 39.4 per cent of the votes in five polls, Morena said.

Ebrard was second with 25.8 per cent. He was the only one of the six Morena candidates who did now show up for the unveiling of the results.

The internal polling process was widely seen as the country’s transition to transparency and public participation due to Mexico’s past incidents where presidents had the habit of handpicking their successors.

However, neither process went smoothly.

The opposition coalition never conducted the final consultation of the process, because another candidate, Beatriz Paredes, withdrew, thus handing the candidacy to the frontrunner Gálvez.

(With inputs from agencies)

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