It’s hard to call Sunday anything less than a tragedy for the violence-ridden country of Mexico.
In the culmination of a race dominated not only by the scourge of the country’s criminal cartels but the looming threat of the ruling faction turning it into a one-party state, former Mexico City Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum was elected to a six-year term to replace outgoing President Andrés Manuel López Obrador.
Sheinbaum was the chosen candidate of the far-left López Obrador and his party, Morena.
While it was unclear Monday whether she had the two-thirds supermajority that Morena had hoped for in order to make radical changes to the country’s constitution — the official results will be determined by a vote count Saturday, according to The New York Times — preliminary counts showed her with nearly 60 percent of the vote, compared with 28 percent for the candidate for the opposition coalition, Fuerza y Corazón por México.
The result was met with considerable celebration in Zócalo, the main square of Mexico City.