The photo differs from that of a normal federal election. In a way, it has already been announced, but the first consultation on the revocation of the presidential mandate, taking place this Sunday in Mexico, essentially mobilizes Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s most loyal supporters. The National Electoral Institute (INE) installed 57,423 polling booths, about a third of the polling booths available to voters in last June’s midterm elections. In addition to this cut as a result of the budget adjustment planned for the referendum, there are also political circumstances. Initially, the opposition forces called not to participate. A morning stroll around some Mexico City polling stations confirms the modest interest, with a few exceptions.
At the Captain Emilio Carranza Elementary School in the Roma district, an election worker, Fernando Rico, comments on the atmosphere of desolation that can be felt after eleven in the morning. “This is territory where informed citizens live, and it is also a non-voting position,” he said. After a few seconds, a couple leaving the room disputed this position: “There are many people complaining, so go vote.” The traditional parties PRI, PAN and PRD openly boycotted the referendum, interpreting it as a kind of trap to empower the president. In the ranks of the ruling Morena party, they instead defend that López Obrador’s critics have given up trying to measure themselves because they are afraid of losing.
Mauricio Solís, 59, asked for a portrait of him in front of the Miguel de Unamuno elementary school on Napoles Street in the Juárez neighborhood. Proudly point the inked finger, a classic of any choice. This vote is unusual. “It is the first time that it has a symbolic meaning beyond the result. We already know that the President has a very high level of acceptance, but it will serve to make the next President feel pressured and call for another consultation,” he says.
A woman casts her ballot in the mayor’s office of Iztapalapa in Mexico City. Quetzalli Nicote Ha
In the old town, the panorama was similar at noon. Hardly an elderly couple has entered one of the polling stations behind the Zócalo Square for more than 15 minutes. The representative of Morena, the only party present in this booth, says that around noon about 150 people passed. “From time to time groups of about 10 people arrive.”
There was much more movement in one of the two special stands of the central Cuauhtémoc delegation. These tables are the ones released to voters who are not registered in the capital. Nearly a hundred people lined up at 1 p.m. to cast their votes. Manuel López is from the state of Puebla but had to work on the outskirts of the capital this Sunday. He is a civil engineer and is building the highway extension for the new airport. “I ran to vote for President. With him there is work and there is justice,” he says shortly before entering the polling station after more than 30 minutes of waiting.
María Guerrero, a 34-year-old telephone saleswoman, has just arrived at the back of the line. He will also vote for Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s continuity, although not everyone in his circle agrees. “My friends made fun of me voting. But I tell them not to get confused, they’re the assholes. Not that they didn’t want the President, because this is the opportunity,” he comments on the opposition’s campaign against taking part in the referendum.
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López Obrador went to the old archbishop’s palace first thing in the morning to vote. As he announced this week, he canceled his election by writing “Viva Zapata”. April 10 marks the 103rd anniversary of the assassination of Emiliano Zapata. “An honest man, an exemplary leader who, as he said himself, did not go into the revolution to become landowners, but to guarantee the peasants’ right to land,” the president wrote on his social networks, adding : “We are participating in the historic democratic exercise that is taking place across the country today. Democracy must be a way of life, a habit of Mexicans, so that no one feels absolute. The people rule.”
Some of the most prominent leaders of the Fourth Transformation also went to vote in the morning. Mexico City Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum was the one who came out on top with the recall during the election campaign and exposed herself to several calls for attention from the electoral authorities. “Long live participatory democracy,” he exclaimed on Twitter. Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard also described it as a “great exercise”. “Very few countries have anything like the revocation of mandate, which is now being implemented in Mexico, where citizens can determine whether or not an incumbent president completes his term,” he said. In 2019, López Obrador sponsored a revision of the constitution allowing for this call, and in September, Congress enacted the law regulating it. “For the first time in our country’s history, we have a constitutional tool to revoke the presidential mandate. Let’s practice it,” veteran Senator Ricardo Monreal has encouraged.
In Mexico City, citizens queue up to vote. Quetzalli Nicote Ha
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