There will be no sleeping in on weekdays for Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo.
The president-elect announced Monday that she will follow in the footsteps of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador and hold 7 a.m. press conferences at the National Palace once she has assumed the nation’s top job.
“You’ll have to wake up early,” she told reporters at a presser that began at the decidedly friendlier time of midday.
Sheinbaum, who will be sworn in as Mexico’s first female president on Oct. 1, said that she will preside over security cabinet meetings at 6 a.m. before holding her mañaneras — as AMLO’s morning press conferences are colloquially known — at 7 a.m.
“I know that our adversaries are going to say that it’s the same [as López Obrador], but it organizes the day a lot,” she said.
“You start [the day] very early, have the [media] briefing, then devote yourself to meetings on the progress of the different projects,” said Sheinbaum, who won a comprehensive victory in the June 2 presidential election as the candidate for the ruling Morena party.
The president-elect said she was discussing with her husband whether they would live in the National Palace in the historic center of Mexico City, as López Obrador and his wife do.
Her announcement that she will hold weekday morning press conferences came after she revealed earlier this month that 33% of respondents to a survey she commissioned said they wanted her to face the media on a daily basis, making that frequency the most popular. Just over 45% of 1,200 people polled said they wanted to begin the pressers at 7 a.m.
On Monday, Sheinbaum also told reporters that she will travel to different parts of the country on weekends to “work with governors and inspect the actions, infrastructure projects and other things we’re going to carry out.”
In that respect, she will also emulate López Obrador, who has traveled widely within Mexico during his six-year term, but seldom left the country.
AMLO uses his daily mañaneras to wax lyrical about government projects and policies; attack political opponents, past presidents and the press; extol the wisdom of the majority of the Mexican people (read: his supporters); and provide Mexican history lessons, among other objectives.
He thus exerts considerable influence over the daily news cycle in Mexico.
Federal and state officials, including the occasional opposition politician, also speak at the pressers, usually before López Obrador engages directly with reporters.
The president on Tuesday acknowledged Sheinbaum’s decision to continue with the 6 a.m. security meetings and 7 a.m. pressers he initiated, and declared he is “very proud of the president-elect and soon-to-be constitutional president.”
“It’s truly a historic event. We’re living a stellar moment in the history of Mexico, it’s something exceptional and we’re very happy,” López Obrador said.
Mexico News Daily
