The Morena party swept every important office in Baja California and picked up a governorship or two. More importantly, the voters chose Morena’s Claudia Sheinbaum as president of Mexico and the first woman to lead the country.
I’m not entirely thrilled about Sheinbaum because she’s a leftist protégé of President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador — popularly known as AMLO — whose ridiculous “hugs not bullets” policy resulted in the murders and disappearances of over 185,000 Mexican men, women and children.
But the key question is whether Sheinbaum will just be a stand-in president in public while AMLO is behind the curtain, pulling the strings. While she’s a leftist, I don’t think she’s a puppet.
Sheinbaum has a PhD in environmental science, and the only black mark on her service as an elected leader was a subway tunnel cave-in during her administration as Mayor of Mexico City.
She’s already talking about more renewable energy production — the opposite of AMLO’S devotion to burning oil and coal to generate electricity. And I don’t think she will tolerate the ongoing corruption at the government oil company Pemex.
Certainly she won’t fight with the woman who heads of the Supreme Court like AMLO did. And she will try to move the entire government to protect women and reduce the rampant femicide that has plagued Mexico under AMLO.
It’s unlikely she will blame all of Mexico’s problems on “neoliberals” or moderates and conservatives — the ones who yanked the Mexican government away from the Stalinist-like PRI ruling party in 2000.
Most importantly, she won’t lie to the Mexican people like AMLO did, especially when releasing economic statistics.
Besides keeping the presidency, the Morena party swept Baja California. In Tijuana, Ismael Buguno is the new mayor, and both Rosarito and Ensenada elected women as mayors — Rocio Adame and Claudia Agaton. Tecate elected Roman Cota Munoz, and Mexicali’s new mayor is another woman, Norma Bustamante.
On Election Sunday, I drove by a voting place in Tijuana, where there were 500 people waiting in line to vote. It was only 9 a.m. When I drove by again in the late afternoon, there were still that many waiting patiently to vote.
All in all, Mexico’s elections were a good day for democracy.
Raoul Lowery Contreras is a Marine Corps veteran, political consultant, prolific author and host of the Contreras Report on YouTube and Facebook.
