(Washington Post) Claudia Sheinbaum will be sworn in Tuesday as North America’s first female president, taking office with the largest mandate since Mexico became a democracy a quarter-century ago.
The former Mexico City mayor won nearly 60 percent of the vote in June, twice as much as her closest rival. Her leftist Morena party and its allies hold ample majorities in Congress and control three-quarters of state legislatures.
Yet the 62-year-old engineer takes office amid a swirl of uncertainty. The economy is slowing, and Mexicans fear a budding cartel war in Sinaloa state. Relations with the United States have hit a rough patch.
The greatest source of unpredictability may be the Mexican political system itself.
Sheinbaum has built her political career as a loyal follower of outgoing president Andrés Manuel López Obrador — so loyal that she sometimes mimics his slow, pause-filled speaking style. But it’s unclear how closely she’ll follow his policies. López Obrador, a longtime icon of the left, delivered an idiosyncratic mix of nationalist energy projects, pragmatic deals with Washington and big spending on the poor. He’s concentrated power in the presidency and the military.
Morena is now so dominant that Mexicans are likening the new government to the one-party system that ruled for most of the 20th century. Under that system, presidents traditionally would serve their sole, six-year term allowed by the constitution, and then retire from politics. López Obrador, however, is leaving office with approval ratings north of 70 percent and showing every sign he plans to maintain his influence in the party he founded.
“The strongest president in recent history will begin her term as the most constrained,” the political scientist Jesús Silva Herzog Márquez wrote in the daily Reforma.
Mexico has relatively weak democratic institutions, and the political system often follows informal rules involving consultations between the presidency and different sectors of society. Now those rules are in flux. Sheinbaum, having trounced the opposition, won’t face the kinds of checks and balances that her predecessors did.
Nor is she likely to be held back by the courts. López Obrador, in his last weeks in office, rammed through a constitutional amendment to dismantle the judiciary. Going forward, Mexicans will elect nearly all their judges, including those on the Supreme Court. Legal scholars and diplomats warn that the system will produce a politicized judiciary.
Sheinbaum, who holds a PhD in energy engineering, has promised to continue many of López Obrador’s popular programs, such as cash benefits for the poor and working class, but to replace his freewheeling style with a more scientific approach. Supporters note her reliance on data to tackle crime and the coronavirus pandemic while she was Mexico City mayor.
But she’ll have to navigate a political system built around López Obrador. If there was any doubt about his intentions, it was settled in September when Morena elected his son, a shrewd political operative known as Andy, to a top party position.
