Politics: Some of Sheinbaum’s latest cabinet picks provide a reality check vs. the praise her previous choices enjoyed
After winning praise over the course of June for 13 initial cabinet picks with strong professional credentials and experience, last week President-elect Claudia Sheinbaum included some more explicitly political choices when announcing four more appointments. A case in point is the decision to retain Ariadna Montiel as Minister of Wellbeing, a post responsible for the distribution and administration of most of the federal government's social programs and one that has been managed with a troubling degree of opacity.
Perhaps no ministry is more political than the traditionally powerful Interior, and that job went to Rosa Icela Rodríguez, chosen in part for her multifaceted career as well as more than 30 years of experience in local and federal PRD and now Morena administrations. When announcing that Morena Party President Mario Delgado is to get the education portfolio, Sheinbaum made the appointment sound all the more political by emphasizing the electoral successes the incumbent party has enjoyed on his watch. As an enthusiastic promoter of the Pact for Mexico and of the educational reform adopted under Enrique Peña Nieto—both condemned in AMLO’s world—he is tasked with trying to have a major “rapprochement” with irate teachers’ groups that continue to protest that earlier reform, but his appointment suggests we should expect little-to-no deviation from the current education policy. Perhaps the least surprising announcement was that her former security minister in the capital will assume the same post on the federal level.
This week we offer an initial analysis of these appointments and what they mean for the next administration.
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