On paper, Mexico’s incoming president Claudia Sheinbaum will turn into one of many world’s strongest ladies when she takes workplace this week.
She’s going to take pleasure in a working supermajority in congress, important management of the courts and a built-up navy as she takes cost of a rustic that’s the US’s greatest buying and selling accomplice.
In follow although, the life-long leftwing activist faces mounting challenges, together with questions over the way forward for the nation’s democracy and its investment-grade credit standing.
She should navigate these obstacles beneath the shadow of her political mentor, outgoing President Andrés Manuel López Obrador.
Since Sheinbaum’s landslide victory in June, the charismatic outgoing chief has appeared to undermine her, saying doubtless members of her cupboard and pushing via a significant judicial overhaul that she should implement.
She has joined the leftwing nationalist every week on his farewell tour, the place supporters purchase “amlito” dolls and shout “Don’t go away!” to the favored chief.
“The message from López Obrador from the second that Claudia Sheinbaum received the election . . . is that [her] triumph is due to him,” mentioned Humberto Beck, professor at El Colegio de México’s centre for worldwide research. “He received’t enable any deviation.”
Traders and the media are speculating over whether or not Sheinbaum, a former educational, could secretly wish to pursue extra reasonable insurance policies than her more and more radical predecessor, who billed his rule as bringing a few “fourth transformation” of Mexico on a par with its struggle of independence.
However in her personal speeches Sheinbaum guarantees “no regressions” and has endorsed López Obrador’s insurance policies of accelerating social welfare programmes, empowering the navy and pushing forward with a sweeping reform to elect all of the nation’s judges.
Like a lot of his supporters, she refers back to the nationalist president in reverential, quasi-religious phrases, even selling the e-book he plans to jot down from the solitude of his rural ranch.
“All of us need to protect his legacy,” she informed the ruling Morena occasion’s congress this month. “We now have his books, speeches, documentary, convention and on a regular basis teachings . . . thanks president, endlessly!”
With the congressional and occasion management, half her cupboard and tens of millions of supporters seen as extra loyal to him than her, any strikes by Sheinbaum to diverge from López Obrador on coverage must be extremely strategic, analysts mentioned.
“If she permits him to impose his agenda, she might be a really weak president . . . and criticised for it, but when she doesn’t do it, she is also weak or endure an onslaught from her personal troops,” mentioned José del Tronco, a professor on the Latin American social sciences college.
“We don’t know if she might be good at taking part in the strategic, cautious chess recreation she’ll have to play.”
A former pupil activist who grew up in leftwing educational circles within the capital, Sheinbaum has been a loyal ally of López Obrador for greater than 20 years.
She caught by him via three presidential campaigns and the constructing of Morena, earlier than working the capital as a comparatively low-profile mayor for 4 and a half years till 2023.
Throughout her time period homicides dropped, however document numbers of individuals went lacking; she electrified public transport, however building slumped after a crackdown on permits.
Since her days in a pupil motion run by males, Sheinbaum’s profession has been marked by discretion in male-dominated environments, mentioned political analyst Blanca Heredia.
“She doesn’t search the limelight,” she mentioned. “She’s strategic, formidable . . . and builds sturdy relationships constructed on belief.”
Her communication and administration types are markedly completely different from her mentor. Her current press conferences have principally lasted beneath an hour, in contrast with two to 3 for López Obrador’s infamous morning information conferences.
The place the charismatic president naturally throws in native slang and cultural references, going off on lengthy tangents, Sheinbaum’s solutions are extra direct. She has a repute as a demanding supervisor.
“Primarily based on what Claudia did in Mexico Metropolis, I don’t suppose there might be any frontal confrontation,” Heredia mentioned. “[She’ll] put her personal stamp on his insurance policies.”
Nonetheless, López Obrador has constructed a construction round his successor that may make it onerous for her to stray from his doctrine. After vowing to retire to his rural ranch after stepping down, in current weeks he has mentioned he would stick round within the capital “to acclimatise for a number of days”.
Regardless of his reputation, he has additionally left forbidding issues for Sheinbaum to sort out. Mexico’s financial system is slowing sharply regardless of excessive authorities spending, with fears growing that the investment-grade standing the nation has held since 2000 might be in danger.
Organised crime has taken management of elements of the nation; the mixed variety of homicides and lacking individuals has reached document highs, and residents of main cities from Culiacán to Tuxtla Gutiérrez dwell in concern.
The electrical energy grid can also be buckling. Earlier than changing into a politician, Sheinbaum was a physicist specialising in vitality. The sector is hoping she is going to quietly transfer away from López Obrador’s nationalist, fossil-fuel-driven insurance policies and velocity up the nation’s inexperienced transition.
“That’s in all probability the world the place we count on most change,” mentioned Kimberley Sperrfechter, rising markets analyst at Capital Economics. “The issue is she’ll be constrained by Mexico’s public funds.”
The primary sign of how carefully Sheinbaum will hew to López Obrador’s line is prone to are available November, when she should current a finances with a steep lower to Mexico’s ballooning fiscal deficit to maintain public funds beneath management.
Traders might be watching how a lot finances she assigns to state oil firm Pemex and whether or not she is going to take troublesome political choices to fulfill fiscal calls for.
She additionally has simply months till elections in June 2025 to switch half the nation’s federal judges, giving her little time to assuage buyers’ escalating fears that the transfer will pose a severe danger to the rule of regulation.
The US presidential elections in November could current one other main stumbling block: whereas Sheinbaum has mentioned the North American commerce deal, USMCA, is “elementary”, Donald Trump, the Republican candidate and former president, is threatening to impose tariffs on US firms in the event that they make investments south of the border.
Del Tronco mentioned Sheinbaum could solely present her true colors if the exterior setting will get too troublesome.
“Will she be keen to sacrifice herself for the reason for López Obrador’s [transformation]?” he requested. “Or will she wish to survive . . . and sacrifice her father like all consequential leaders do?”
