Mexicans will decide this Sunday whether Andrés Manuel López Obrador leaves the presidency early or ends his term in 2024, in the first referendum in the country’s history that will give the left-wing president a boost.
“Let no one forget that the people rule, the people provide, and the people take”López Obrador told the press a few steps from the presidential palace after the vote.
AMLO, as it is known by the initials of its name, managed to get the consultation enshrined in the 2019 constitution as an antidote to “bad government”.
“It will help us that no one feels absolute at any level of the scale.” This Sunday added the ruler, elected for six years.
Polling stations opened at 8am locally and close at 6pm in most parts of the country. of 126 million inhabitants and where there are three time zones.
Dozens of people lined up at the polls before the ballot box opened, AFP noted, although analysts see it as difficult for the referendum to reach the turnout threshold to be binding: 37 million voters (40% of eligible voters).
That fact alone would confirm the country’s first left-wing president in office, 68 years old and with an approval rating of 58%, according to a consolidated survey by the company Oraculus. Voting is not compulsory in Mexico.
“AMLO, you are not alone!” reads some of the few billboards in Mexico City, which, like other parts of the country, was free of the campaign atmosphere.
“Ready and go!” and “Empty Ballot Boxes!” Opposition politicians and users calling for abstention respond on their social media page with the accusation that the referendum is just an act of “propaganda”.
Looking to 2024
Benigno Gasca, a 57-year-old mathematician and musician, believes the referendum is an “opportunity to change what isn’t right.”
“There have been presidents who, after being elected by the people, ended up serving other interests”he told AFP.
Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (L) accompanied by his wife Beatriz Gutierrez, leaves a polling station after casting his ballot during the national consultation to revoke his mandate in Mexico City April 10, 2022. (Photo by Alfredo ESTRELLA / AFP) – Photo: AFPBut Laura González, a 62-year-old retired teacher, believes that “thrown money in the trash is a useless exercise.”. “If his people were the ones who organized the consultation, let them go,” he told the news outlet.
The electoral consultancy Integralia estimates the average voter turnout at 14.8% of the voters. “An overwhelming majority is expected to keep López Obrador in office,” he said in a report.
AMLO accuses the National Electoral Institute (Ine) of sabotaging the referendum in complicity with “the Conservatives” (as he calls the opposition). announced a reform whereby its members and those of the electoral tribunal would be elected by popular vote rather than by the Chamber of Deputies.
“It is completely wrong that INE failed to fulfill its duty to disseminate the referendum,” said the organization’s president, Lorenzo Córdova, on Sunday, denouncing the “possible use of public funds” by the ruling party to promote the consultation.
The INE installed 57,500 polling stations compared to 161,000 in a federal election.
A poll worker applies hand sanitizer to a voter at a polling station during a national referendum to revoke the mandate of Mexican President Andrés Manuel Lopez Obrador in Chimalhuacan, Mexico state, Mexico April 10, 2022. – Mexicans are voting Sunday in a national referendum championed by President Andrés Manuel López Obrador on whether to step down or end his six-year term. (Photo by PEDRO PARDO / AFP) – Photo: AFPWithout greater risk of having to give up power, The president could use the referendum to bring some projects to the public and get the “machinery” of the governing Morena party going on the way to the presidential elections in 2024, the political scientist Martha Anaya estimates.
“It will be a parameter to evaluate the mobilization ability” of the ruling party, Integralia emphasizes.
In the country there is no re-election or renewal of the mandate of the president, and in any case AMLO has announced that he will retire from politics in 2024.
horizon of challenges
In the nearly three years remaining in his tenure, his “Transformations” project faces several challenges, such as the application of an electricity sector reform approved this week by the Supreme Court against the wishes of the United States and Canada and Spain, as well as opposition parties PRI, PAN and PRD.
The new frame that AMLO hopes to strengthen with a constitutional reform, it gives the state more weight in energy production.
Some of the bets are going up because However, the ruling coalition, the main force in Congress, is not garnering enough votes to change the constitution. and is forced to negotiate.
López Obrador bases his approval on social programs, to which he is allocating $23,000 million this year (6.4% of the budget), and measures such as improving the minimum wage ($265 per month).
“There has been progress, especially in the social sphere, and corruption has fallen sharply,” says Herlinda Escamilla, a 75-year-old antiques dealer who benefits from a subsidy for the elderly.
According to Coneval, a public body that assesses social policies, 44% of Mexicans live in poverty, one of the scourges AMLO promised to fight along with corruption.
The President’s challenges also include ongoing criminal violence, which has claimed around 340,000 lives since 2006and a Covid-19-hit economy that would collapse 8.4% in 2020, rebound 5% in 2021, and grow just 3.4% this year.
Annualized inflation is at its highest level in two decades (7.3% in February).
*With information from AFP.