Mexico's first female president is sworn in, promising to help the poor

 

PP Cherian Dallas

Mexico: Claudia Sheinbaum was sworn in as Mexico's 66th president on Tuesday, becoming the country's first female president and the first Jewish president in the Roman Catholic country. Their victory comes 70 years after women in Mexico got the right to vote.

The daughter of activist academics, Scheinbaum, 62, is also the first female mayor of Mexico City, the capital of Mexico. She stepped down from that post last year to run a presidential campaign supported by her predecessor and political mentor, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador.

Despite Mexico's current huge budget deficit and sluggish economy, she has promised to continue social welfare programs for the country's poor started by López Obrador.

Sheinbaum also faces a country beset by violence, such as the fights between drug cartels that often erupt on the streets of the northwestern city of Culiacan, home to several cartels. Local security forces have not had a chance to quell the violence.

As mayor of Mexico City, Sheinbaum was praised for reducing the city's homicide rate by increasing the pay of an expanded police force, a strategy she promised to replicate across the country.

Scheinbaum takes the helm of Mexico as the country implements a judicial overhaul led by López Obrador. The controversial reform would eventually replace all judges in Mexico with new ones elected by popular vote.

 Claudia is a Ph.D. in energy engineering and studied at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in northern California in the early 1990s. In 2007, he was part of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which shared the Nobel Peace Prize with former US Vice President Al Gore.

A former climate scientist with a doctorate in energy engineering, the new president's first trip was to the Pacific coast resort of Acapulco, Mexico, which was devastated last week by the rains of Category 3 Hurricane John.