Following the announcement of female candidates by the two major political parties, Mexico appears poised to elect its first female president in the upcoming election.
The ruling Morena party announced Claudia Sheinbaum as its candidate for the 2024 general election on Wednesday. Senator Xóchitl Gálvez, who was chosen by the opposition coalition on Sunday, will be her opponent.
They will be competing to succeed incumbent president Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who must leave office in 2019 due to Mexican law which forbids presidents from running for a second six-year term.
Former Mexico City mayor Sheinbaum has long been thought to be the front-runner for the position. After topping a party candidate poll conducted internally, she was formally proclaimed Morena’s choice.
Sheinbaum, who was born in Mexico City in 1962, holds a PhD in energy engineering in addition to a physics degree.
In the year 2000, when Obrador was the mayor of Mexico City, she held the position of secretary of the environment. She has remained close to the departing leader ever since, backing him throughout his three presidential elections.
In 2018, she won the election for Mexico City mayor.
She quit that position after four and a half years in order to pursue her goal of running for president of her party, of which she is a founder.
On Sunday, her primary opponent Gálvez was formally proclaimed as the nominee of the coalition of opposition parties known as “Frente Amplio Por Mexico,” the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) of Mexico said on its X account, formerly known as Twitter.
The main force opposing Morena is PRI. The National Action Party (PAN), the Democratic Revolution Party (PRD), and the PRI are the three opposition parties that make up the coalition “Frente Amplio Por Mexico” (The Broad Front for Mexico). Senator Gálvez represents PAN.
“The president (López Obrador) wants to defeat me, but he won’t defeat me,” Gálvez stated to CNN en Espaol in July, “I am a courageous and forward-thinking lady, so this is just the beginning.
Gálvez, who was born into poverty, was given the opportunity to study computer engineering after being awarded a scholarship. She eventually moved on to start her own firm.
She presided over Mexico City’s Miguel Hidalgo borough as mayor from 2015 to 2018. She secured a seat for PAN in the Senate in 2018.
This comes as another historic decision was made by Mexico’s Supreme Court on Wednesday, decriminalizing abortion on a federal level after ruling that the practice’s present restriction violates the Constitution.
The Federal Criminal Code’s prohibition of abortion was found to be illegal by the First Chamber of the Court because it infringes the rights of women and those who are able to conceive, the Supreme Court announced on social media.