Deadly violence mars Mexico’s historic election, where a woman is expected to become president for the first time.
Claudia Sheinbaum of the ruling leftist MORENA party voted Sunday to become the country’s first female president in Mexico’s biggest election, which was also the bloodiest ever.
In Short:
1- Claudia Sheinbaum represents the ruling leftist MORENA party.
2- Xochitl Galvez, another female candidate from her conservative PAN party, is expected to defeat.
3- The elections were marred by violence as several political candidates were killed by criminal organizations.
Most voting ended on Sunday in Mexico’s election. Claudia Sheinbaum, the country’s first female president, is expected to be elected. The country’s biggest election has also been one of the most violent. Many political candidates and applicants have been killed by criminal organizations. Criminal organizations are trying to influence those in power.
According to a report, at least 38 candidates were killed, increasing the threat of conflicting drug cartels to democracy.
Xochitl Galvez of the conservative PAN party, representing a coalition of opposition parties, is expected to lose to Claudia Sheinbaum of the ruling leftist Morena party. Jorge Alvarez Menez, representing the center-left Citizens’ Movement, is the third candidate, the youngest in the poll race.
Top five points in Mexican elections:
The National Electoral Institute reported it had to cancel plans for 170 voting centers, most of them in Michoacan and Chiapas, because of security problems. In Puebla, four armed attackers tried to break into a school where voting centers had been set up in order to steal ballots. Hours before the nationwide vote on June 1, a local candidate was shot and killed in western Mexico. Violent crime has been a key issue in this year's presidential election.
Around 100 million Mexicans were eligible to vote in Sunday's elections. In addition to the presidential vote, eight governorships, both Houses and the mayor of Mexico City are being contested. CNN reported that about 1.4 million Mexicans are eligible to vote even if they are outside the country. Reuters reported that about 20,000 elected positions will be up for grabs in Mexico.
Voters in some regions of Mexico decided to cancel their votes by writing in the names of some of the country's more than 110,000 missing people for president, part of a 'Votes for the Disappeared' campaign, the Associated Press reported. Such families have criticized the government of outgoing President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, who they said had tried to downplay the problem of missing people.
Claudia Sheinbaum, who is ahead of her main rival Xochitl Galvez in opinion polls, will have to confront organized crime violence if elected. More people have been killed during the tenure of outgoing President Lopez Obrador than any other administration in the country's history, although the murder rate has decreased.
CNN reported that US officials were closely watching the elections in Mexico as it was a crucial time for the administration led by President Joe Biden. Republicans have embraced the record number of migrants at the US-Mexico border, which they have called evidence of the Biden administration's weakness, making migration control a key issue in the elections.