A woman walks past newspapers displaying the victory of Claudia Sheinbaum, the presidential candidate of the ruling Morena party, a day after Mexico's general election, in Mexico City, on June 3.Alexandre Meneghini/Reuters
For foreigners, the notable thing about Mexico’s election on Sunday was that somebody named Claudia Sheinbaum could become the country’s president. Our outdated image of Mexico as a macho, Catholic, homogenous country was shattered by the fact that almost 60 per cent of its people voted a Jewish woman into its top office, and that neither her sex nor her ethno-religious roots were particularly important issues.
Representation matters – until it happens. Then other issues return. And for many Mexicans, long familiar with Ms. Sheinbaum from her years as mayor of Mexico City and accustomed to the diversity of their country’s other major institutions, the big issue after election day is something called Plan C.
Current president Andrés Manuel López Obrador, Ms. Sheinbaum’s mentor and close associate within their nominally left-wing Morena party, devised Plan C as a long-shot bid to reshape, and politicize, the country’s institutions, in the event of a 60-per-cent supermajority for Morena’s coalitions in both of Mexico’s legislative chambers – a situation that would allow him to change the constitution easily. The results seem to show them within a couple seats of just such a supermajority, and thus likely able to wrangle the bills through Congress.
If they succeed, Plan C would alter the constitution to allow for the direct election of judges to Mexico’s Supreme Court – which effectively means it would become an ultra-partisan constitutional court controlled by their party. It would also eliminate many of Mexico’s arms-length regulatory bodies and replace them with direct political control, and slash other checks and balances in Mexico’s once-robust democratic system.
Even if Ms. Sheinbaum were to turn against Mr. López Obrador – and she reiterated her loyalty in her victory speech – it wouldn’t matter, because he has declared his intention to push the radical reforms through during the month between the new legislature taking office on Sept. 1, and his presidential term ending on Oct. 1. (Mexico allows its presidents a single-six-year term.)
So there’s a good chance Ms. Sheinbaum will take office in October with Plan C a fait accompli, making possible the sort of single-party hold on power that Mexico experienced during much of the 20th century.
Yet there is still hope, even among many who voted for her and support her party’s general direction, that she will break from Mr. López Obrador on other key issues. That is, the best hope for Mexican democracy is that Ms. Sheinbaum wasn’t telling the truth.
“If the result is overwhelmingly favourable to the government, I have no doubt that we are burying Mexican democracy,” the prominent Mexican historian and democracy activist Enrique Krauze said in an interview published Saturday. “They are going to subordinate the judiciary immediately to the executive … they will limit freedom of expression.” On the other hand, “If she decides to distance herself, Mexico will be on a path to a less abnormal, less dangerous situation than what we have lived through.”
The hope is that Ms. Sheinbaum will maintain the better aspects of Mr. López Obrador’s presidency – notably, the improved social programs and increased minimum wage that helped alleviate some of the crushing poverty that plagues several Mexican states – while turning away from the more disturbing legacies of his violence-plagued, populist legacy.
When Mr. López Obrador came to office in 2018 as Mexico’s first president from a left-wing party, supporters hoped he’d tackle the criminal cartels and corrupt courts and police that control much of Mexico, reduce the militarization of civic life, deal with the humanitarian crisis of South and Central American migrants traversing the country and filling its cities, reduce the ecological damage caused by the country’s all-powerful petroleum and electrical-generation industries, and ally himself with other progressive countries.
Instead, he aligned himself closely with right-wing strongmen such as Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump, going so far as to help Mr. Trump enforce his cruel border-control measures, while refusing to invest in services and humanitarian support for the hundreds of thousands of stranded migrants resulting from those measures. He renationalized and restricted competition in energy industries, forcing Mexico to rely on a high share of coal- and petroleum-generated energy. He allowed the military to take over scores of formerly civilian tasks, including ones related to tourism and infrastructure. And he oversaw an explosion of brutal violence caused by out-of-control cartels exercising control over governments and regions, becoming notorious for his inaction.
He followed a long history of Mexican presidents who governed very differently from the way they campaigned for office. The hope is that Ms. Sheinbaum, a climate scientist with a record of smart and humane social policies, makes a similar about-face on even some of these issues – not just to establish herself as a self-respecting independent figure, but to show that her presidency is not defined by the fact that it likely will have started with a loaded deck.