Mexico set for first female president in 2024 election
Mexico will almost certainly have its first female president in 2024, after the governing Morena party and the opposition coalition both chose women as their candidates.
Former Mexico City mayor Claudia Sheinbaum was named Morena’s candidate on Wednesday, despite runner-up Marcelo Ebrard’s last-minute denouncement of the process and demand for it to be redone.
Sheinbaum is a climate scientist-turned-politician who was widely believed to be the preferred choice of president Andrés Manuel López Obrador who is unable to run again.
…
Gálvez is a businesswoman who became a senator in 2018 and has seized media attention with her aspirational story of growing up with an Indigenous father and mestizo mother in Hidalgo state, before working her way through public university and into business and politics.
I don't know those two, but the idea of a scientist as president sounds awesome.
Angela Merkel is a famous example of someone who has a doctorate in quantum chemistry and was a researcher before turning to politics.
It helped in some cases. E.g. the first thing the government did when faced with Covid was to ask experts and put it into the hand of the RKI with several people familiar with coronaviruses.
However, in other instances she understood the science and just chose to ignore it because of politics.
Understanding science is good, but you still need to act accordingly.
Do you have an example of that? I mean choosing politics over science doesnt immediately screams "wrong" to me
Nuclear energy.
She was at first in favour of keeping it, but after Fukushima and subsequent panic in Germany she U-turned and got out of it.
Now, I am aware that nuclear energy has issues, like the nuclear waste. However, we need something to tide us over until we fully transitioned into renewables and that something is now the shittiest coal we can get, And of course, at this point it's way too late to reverse it again. We started to build down our nuclear facilities years ago and building them up again would not be worth it.
However, we should've not stopped using nuclear that early in the process of pushing renewable energy.
Mrs. Merkel was aware, but she rather went with the vox populi of fear of Fukushima.
Nuclear waste is better overall for the environment than coal ash ponds. I live near a coal power plant with those ponds. Not the prettiest sight to see and probably poisoning my local water table. Also, coal produces more nuclear radiation than nuclear power plants do.
I agree with you, but politics is complicated. If she felt like continuing to fight for nuclear at that time would be unpopular, it might not have been worth it. It probably would have made it impossible to achieve other goals.
I actually agree with Merkels decision.
Ideally a scientist would operate politically on the basis of improving society though objective, measurable and honest actions, however Sheinbaum is corrupt as they come, she's pretty smart but she's basically sold her soul to her party, which was founded by the current Mexican president, who has been dismantling as many autonomous bodies for checks and balances as well as transparency institutions as he can.
Sheinbaum is very likely to win since the president has a 2-3 hour live propaganda show almost every morning where he attacks journalists and the opposition and he makes cringe jokes.
We'll have to see if once she gets executive power she starts acting for the betterment of society or if she continues following AMLO
The idea sounds great, but this person is not so. She is just a puppet to the current president
Among other things, this scientist has neglected mexicos city subway causing several accidents and failures.
I totally agree, but why would a good scientist stop researching?
Also we are speaking about real scientists, not the one mentioned in the article.
What do you mean "real" scientists?
She has a PhD in energy engineering and physics.
Probably when you start to wonder if all your research is for nothing since nobody seems interested in enacting policy grounded in science.