Mexico City has a new mayor, cabinet

Mexico City changed mayors on 5 December as the leftist Miguel Ángel Mancera Espinosa, elected in the July 2012 general elections, replaced the popular Marcelo Ebrard Casaubon of the socialist Democratic Revolutionary Party (PRD). The mayor of Mexico City has the rank of a state governor. Mancera was the candidate of the Progressive Movement in the elections and backed by several parties including the PRD. He defeated two high-profile rivals in the former president of the Institutional Revolutionary Party Beatriz Paredes Rangel and the conservative anti-crime activist Isabel Miranda de Wallace, backed by the National Action Party. With his victory the Left retained its political control of the capital and enjoyed a very considerable political boost in the otherwise disappointing election. Mancera presented his cabinet on 5 December, a team including former city officials, former ministers and leftist eminences. The most notable appointment was of Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas Solórzano, the capital's first elected mayor in the 1990s and founder of the PRD. Mancera made the researcher René Drucker Colín Science Secretary and the academic and entrepreneur Miguel Torruco Marqués Tourism Secretary, CNNMéxico reported. These were considered close to the former presidential candidate and former PRD leader Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who had reportedly envisaged them as ministers if elected president. Other appointments included: Hector Serrano Cortés as Governance Secretary - effectively deputy-mayor and administrative chief - Jesús Rodríguez Almeida as Public Security Secretary in charge of policing, and Rodolfo Ríos Garza as the capital's chief prosecutor, CNN and the website ADNpolítico reported.