Mexico elects first female president

In a historic step, Claudia Sheinbaum is set to become Mexico's first female president after an official quick count declared her the winner of an election that featured two women as the front-runners.

Mario Delgado, head of the ruling party Morena, declared Sheinbaum the presumptive winner late on Sunday, ahead of a full count being done over the next few days. Sheinbaum delivered an acceptance speech in the wee hours of Monday morning. Crowds of her supporters gathered to celebrate their victory in Zocalo, Mexico City's main central square.

Mexicans voted for a president and more than 20,000 congressional and local positions across the country, including 128 senate seats, 500 deputy seats, Mexico City mayor, and governors in eight states.

Some 98 million people registered to vote on Sunday in the largest election in the country's history based on the number of positions being decided, with candidates focusing on issues of security, migration and economic reform.

An official quick count gave Sheinbaum an irreversible lead, Mexico's National Electoral Institute, or INE, reported on Sunday night.

The INE's statistical sample gave Sheinbaum between 58.3 percent and 60.7 percent of the vote, well ahead of her closest rival Xochitl Galvez, who was projected to have won between 26.6 and 28.6 percent.

Sheinbaum led the race leading into election day, maintaining a double-digit lead in opinion polls over businesswoman Galvez. However, Galvez had urged her own supporters to wait for the official results.

Sheinbaum will become Mexico's first female president. The climate scientist is a former mayor of Mexico City and an ally of incumbent President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, commonly known as AMLO.

After confirmation, Sheinbaum is scheduled to start her term on Oct 1, taking over from her mentor AMLO, who remains popular but is constitutionally barred from running for a second term.

"This is a clear continuity of the model of government put in place by Lopez Obrador," Ezequiel Gonzalez Matus, a lawyer and electoral issues expert, said.

"She has said she will continue with AMLO's efforts to limit the power of the judiciary and control legislative power through his party."

Hector Manuel Diaz, founder of the Association of Business for the Fourth Transformation, said Sheinbaum's win represents "a step beyond patriarchy and machismo often seen in Latin cultures". The group's name references the "fourth transformation "reform promise of AMLO's 2018 election campaign.

'Turning point'

"It is important that my country can have a woman win for the first time because it marks a turning point in history," Diaz said.

This election campaign sparked discussions about the role of women in Mexican politics, though Sheinbaum shied away from the topic, choosing instead to focus on her policies and taking the mantle from AMLO.

Sheinbaum is a "well-prepared and capable woman to carry out a government plan she has already defined and announced on several occasions", Diaz said. "I consider her solid and structured … She has the talent to get things done."

Sheinbaum's main rival, Galvez, is a former senator and top indigenous affairs official. She was backed by a coalition of three parties and also promised to extend social programs.

A third candidate and late entrant in the race, Jorge Alvarez Maynez, made headlines by proposing policies to eliminate the criminalization of some drug possession and end militarization.

Security issues dominated the election campaign, which was marred by violence and underscored the challenges that the country faces battling its high crime rates.

The writer is a freelance journalist for China Daily.