Mayor of Mexico City: “There is no need to change direction”

Claudia Sheinbaum, the mayor of Mexico City, has had a bad week: Just as the capital was controlling one of the world’s worst Covid-19 outbreaks, Subway flyover collapsed In early May, 26 people were killed.

Then, a month later, the opposition occupied more than half of the city’s administrative districts in the midterm elections, including Tlalpan, where Sheinbaum served as mayor from 2015 to the end of 2017. The defeat of the capital was a heavy blow to one of the largest administrative regions on the left.

But 59-year-old Sheinbaum is still calm and composed. “There is no need to change direction,” she said in an interview with the Financial Times. “The president knows exactly where he is going, and we are with him.”

The voters of Mexico City were the key to President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s overwhelming victory in 2018 and a nationwide Voting on June 6 Has put the ruling coalition in power in 17 of Mexico’s 32 states. However, after losing 9 of the 16 districts of Mexico City, the left’s quarter-century rule of the capital came to an end.

“We were surprised by some of the results-we have to reflect internally,” she said.

Sheinbaum is widely regarded as López Obrador’s favorite person to succeed him in 2024. He blames this result on opposing the government’s search to replace neoliberal reforms, focusing on combating inequality, corruption and A “false propaganda campaign” launched by critics who put the poor first.

She said the subway’s “horrible tragedy”-a preliminary independent report indicated that this was due Construction defects -Affected voting.

Sheinbaum will be able to become Mexican The first female president, and vowed to cheer up from the election failure and let the capital regain its foothold in the economy.

“I am strong. I believe in my government, I believe in the transformation of my country,” she said. “Neoliberalism cannot return to Mexico-it has caused a lot of damage.”

As president, López Obrador (López Obrador) was hit by a sudden change in the rules of the energy industry that hit business confidence, which triggered a large number of lawsuits. He cancelled some of his investments in the new Mexico City airport and the brewery in the north of the country.

But Sheinbaum, who has a Ph.D. in climate engineering, has approved the president’s energy plan, which focuses on fossil fuels and seeks to give priority to state-owned hydropower plants over cheaper private solar and wind energy projects in terms of renewable energy.

“We will build the world’s largest solar power plant,” she said, referring to the Federal Electric Company’s plan to install solar panels on top of the Mexico City food wholesale market this year.

As the outbreak in Mexico City eases Maximum number of excess deaths In any city in the world, she hopes that various initiatives can really take off now.These include improving transportation connections, providing community-wide computer programming courses, and revamping a tough industrial zone that accounts for 1% of the country’s GDP. Innovation CenterAnd solve the water crisis.

Twenty years ago, when López Obrador was the mayor of Mexico City, Sheinbaum was a scientist and long-time leftist, and she cut into the issue from a political perspective. . During his tenure in the municipal government, she oversaw the Metrobus rapid transit project and the construction of the second floor of the city highway.

She emphasized resilient private investment and said her blueprint for making cities greener, fluid and innovative is still on track.

Mexico City was named this month Top spot In a survey of future cities in the Americas conducted by the Financial Times company fDi Intelligence, foreign investment in Latin America from 2021-22.

It found Mexico City Received 353 foreign direct investment projects, ranked third among all surveyed locations, and ranked among the top 10 cities in the Americas in terms of economic potential.

“People recognize that the country’s ongoing transformation is contrary to what people usually describe, which means… we are always open to investment and economic development,” Sheinbaum said.