FRESNILLO, Mexico: Campaigning officially begins today (Friday) for an election that is likely to introduce Mexico’s first female president, a milestone for a country with a long tradition of macho culture.
Rival rallies were planned, including a rally for the opposition after midnight in one of the nation’s most violent states, as the race heats up ahead of the June 2 vote.
Claudia Sheinbaum, the former mayor of Mexico City, is a close ally of ousted President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, known by his initials AMLO, and heads the ruling Morena party.
A poll by research firm Oraculus shows the 61-year-old scientist by training has a significant lead, with 63 percent support.
His main challenger, opposition coalition candidate Juchitel Galvez, 61, has 31 percent of support, while Jorge Alvarez, 38, of the Civic Movement party, has just 5 percent, polls show.
Political observers say that Mr. Sheinbaum is in a very strong position.
Mr. Shinbaum is a staunch supporter and confidant of left-wing populist Mr. Lopez Obrador, who according to Oracle has an approval rating of nearly 70 percent but is constitutionally required to step down after one term.
Shinbaum, the grandson of Bulgarian and Lithuanian Jewish immigrants, has vowed to continue López Obrador’s policy agenda.
She is scheduled to address fans in Mexico City’s square Friday afternoon. It was the center square of the city that he ran from 2018 until last year when he resigned to run for president.
Galvez, a 61-year-old businessman with indigenous roots, decided to focus on the worsening security situation in the country at a rally scheduled to take place after midnight in the violence-plagued town of Frenillo in Zacatecas state.
He said the location was chosen to send “a message of hope to all Mexicans that this long night of violence will end because we will confront the criminals.”
The visit is the first of several planned trips to a city that residents consider Mexico’s least safe, highlighting the government’s failure to deal with what Gálvez calls spiraling violence.
About 450,000 people have been killed across Mexico since the government launched its army to fight drugs in 2006, according to official figures.
Gallows leads an opposition coalition consisting of the Institutional Revolutionary Party, which ruled the country for more than 70 years until 2000, the conservative National Action Party and the leftist Democratic Revolutionary Party.
But his background sets him apart from traditional conservative opponents. He wears indigenous clothing, uses a colloquial language that contains similes, and is known for traveling around Mexico City on a bicycle.
