The saying goes: “Whoever walks with the wise becomes wise, but the companion of fools will suffer harm.”
By acting swiftly to appoint the first six members of her cabinet — three men and three women — Mexico’s President-elect Claudia Sheinbuam has ticked many boxes and squashed some lingering doubts about the direction and focus of her upcoming six-year administration, beginning October 1.
Naming former Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard as her new economy minister not only calmed market jitters, helping steady a faltering peso, but seemingly patched up any bitterness caused by the pair’s fractious battle for the Morena party presidential nomination.
Along with Ebrard, Sheinbuam’s appointment of Juan Ramón de la Fuente, the highly respected former rector of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) and Mexico’s permanent representative to the United Nations, as her foreign minister — as well as the former regional head of the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization and World Bank collaborator Julio Berdegué Sacristán as agriculture minister — “sends a good message to international markets, businessmen and investors,” noted Carlos Marín, director of the Milenio newspaper.
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