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Mexico’s first female president, Claudia Sheinbaum, took office promising continuity with her predecessor and hitting back at critics who fear the country is sliding away from multi-party democracy.
Sheinbaum, a former Mexico City mayor, has sweeping powers to change the constitution after a landslide election victory but will be limited by the political confines laid out by her mentor, outgoing president Andrés Manuel López Obrador.
In a firm speech to lawmakers, Latin American presidents and US first lady Jill Biden on Tuesday, Sheinbaum praised López Obrador and pledged to maintain his social policies while emphasising women’s rights, green energy and new passenger railways.
She also hit back at criticism that her government would continue López Obrador’s erosion of democratic norms.
“Anyone who says there will be authoritarianism is lying,” she said in the lower house after her swearing-in. “We are democrats, human rights will be respected.”
Sheinbaum takes office as swaths of the country are living under the control of organised crime, an already-weak economy is slowing and Mexicans are grappling with a sharp deterioration in public healthcare.
The ruling party Morena has consolidated power over the past six years, including holding two-thirds of governorships and congress, while López Obrador has weakened checks on presidential power.
Sheinbaum’s technical style and background as an energy academic have led some to believe she will make a break from her populist predecessor. But her inaugural address signalled continuity, which could trouble critics and opposition figures who fear she will maintain López Obrador’s policies to defund, attack and eliminate Mexico’s independent institutions.
“There’s nothing that indicates a change in . . . how power is exercised,” said opposition lawmaker Claudia Ruiz Massieu. “The coming years are going to be very complicated for those of us who don’t agree with the regime.”
The country’s polarised politics were evident on the streets of the capital on Tuesday. Hundreds marched against a controversial overhaul of the judiciary, while tens of thousands of Morena supporters, buoyed by the party’s social programmes and rising wages, filled the main square, waving flags and chanting for the outgoing leader.
“This is history in the making . . . as women, we’re counting on her to give us all her support, just like the president [López Obrador] did,” said Graciela Hernández, 62, who came out to support Sheinbaum.
Sheinbaum is a longtime activist who grew up in leftwing intellectual circles. On Monday, Colombia’s President Gustavo Petro told media she used to be a member of M-19, the urban leftist-nationalist guerrilla group to which he also belonged. A spokesperson for Sheinbaum did not respond to a request for comment.
The incoming president inherits Mexico’s largest budget deficit since the 1980s. Sheinbaum has said she would be fiscally responsible and maintain a “reasonable” debt level but has also promised new social programmes and significant public infrastructure investment.
“The fiscal situation is not what she painted, there will have to be significant cuts,” said Luis Rubio, chair of the independent México Evalúa think-tank. “She’ll have to move away from [López Obrador], and I think that’s the moment in which politically it’s going to be very complicated.”
Sheinbaum has also promised to present a national energy plan in the coming days with ambitious renewables targets, though how she will reconcile those goals with her commitment to state dominance of the sector is unclear.
Lacking López Obrador’s charisma and facing a mounting list of challenges, Sheinbaum will not have long to flesh out her plans.
“Her strengths are not in politicking or narrative building, so she’ll have to deliver,” Rubio said.
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