Election update! ~ Mayor killed shortly after Elections

It is Election time around the Globe !!

Read recently about a woman’s long list of accolades. She has a Ph.D in energy engineering, participated in a United Nations panel of climate scientists awarded a Nobel Peace Prize and governed the capital, one of the largest cities in the hemisphere.  She is a former ballet dancer too ! -  calls herself “obsessive” and “disciplined.”  On Sunday, she added another achievement to her résumé: becoming the first woman elected  President of _______

INDIA has just had the results declared in Lok Sabha Elections 2024.    BJP has emerged victorious on 240 out of 543 seats, while the Congress secured 99 seats.   The party biddings for its consecutive third,  BJP fell short of the 272-majority mark, still has  NDA allies to form the government.  

Indian democracy has come a long long way since the First Lok Sabha was constituted on 17 April 1952 and the House, for the first time, met at 10.45 A.M. on 13 May 1952. As the offices of Speaker and Deputy Speaker of the House of the People were vacant, the President of India, on 17 April 1952, in exercise of the powers conferred upon him by clause (1) of article 95 of the Constitution, appointed Shri Ganesh Vasudeo Mavalankar, a member of the Lok Sabha, to perform the duties of the Speaker until the first sitting of the House.  On 11 May 1952, the President of India appointed Shri G.V. Mavalankar and Shri M. Ananthasayanam Ayyangar to be persons before either of whom members of the House of the People  would  subscribe oath.

Thousands of miles away, general elections were held in Mexico on 2 June 2024.  Voters elected a new president to serve a six-year term, all 500 members of the Chamber of Deputies, and all 128 members of the Senate of the Republic.  The president is elected by plurality voting in a single round; there is no provision for a second run-off round. Article 83 of the Mexican Constitution prohibits presidents from pursuing re-election for another term (sexenio): presidents in Mexico are limited to one term. The new president will be sworn in on 1 October.

The president of Mexico  is the head of state and head of government of Mexico. Under the Constitution of Mexico, the president heads the executive branch of the federal government and is the commander-in-chief of the Mexican Armed Forces.  The office of the president is considered to be revolutionary, in the sense that the powers of office are derived from the Revolutionary Constitution of 1917.  

Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo [24.6.1962] is the news President, a  scientist, and academic, she has many things to her credit.  From 2000 to 2006, Sheinbaum served as secretary of the environment under future president Andrés Manuel López Obrador during his tenure as head of government of Mexico City.  A scientist by profession, Sheinbaum received her Doctor of Philosophy in energy engineering from the National Autonomous University of Mexico. As an academic, she has authored over 100 articles and two books on energy, the environment, and sustainable development. She contributed to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and in 2018 was named one of the BBC's 100 Women.

Ms. Sheinbaum, 61, captured at least 58 percent of the vote in a landmark election on Sunday that featured two women competing for the nation’s highest office — a groundbreaking contest in a country long known for a culture of machismo and rampant violence against women.

However, the lady pictured at the start could not savour her electoral win.  The mayor of a town in western Mexico was killed on Monday, the regional government said, barely 24 hours after Claudia Sheinbaum was elected the Latin American country's first woman president. The Michoacan state government condemned "the murder of the municipal president (mayor) of Cotija, Yolanda Sanchez Figueroa".  The murder of the woman mayor came  after Sheinbaum's landslide victory injected hope for change in a country riven by rampant gender-based violence.

Sanchez, who was elected mayor in 2021 elections, was gunned down on a public road, according to local media. Authorities have not given details on the murder, but said a security operation had been launched to arrest the killers. The politician was previously kidnapped in September last year while leaving a shopping mall in the city of Guadalajara in the state of Jalisco, which neighbors Michoacan. According to local media reports at the time, the kidnappers belonged to the powerful Jalisco Cartel - New Generation (CJNG), who allegedly threatened the mayor for opposing the criminal group's takeover of her municipality's police force.

Sad !

With regards – S Sampathkumar
5^th June 2024.