Mexican Presidential Referendum: From Civic Apathy to the Fourth Transformation
Mexico’s ruling party, Morena, is mobilizing its voter base in a historical presidential referendum — one that they themselves initiated. A recalcitrant opposition is calling for a boycott. The objective is to wake the citizenry from a state of civic apathy to participate in public life as protagonists in the Fourth Transformation.
On Sunday April 10 of 2022 Mexico will head to the polls for the first-ever presidential referendum in the country’s history. Unlike most referendums, this one was not set in motion by the political opposition, but by the ruling party as a sort of ratification to strengthen and legitimize President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s mandate. For this reason, the referendum has been attacked relentlessly by the opposition as “yet another of the President populist whims,” an attempt to rally public opinion ahead of elections in six states. And in the middle of it all unfolds a heated political battle to exert majority state control in the electricity market, as well as a growing confrontation between the Federal Government and the electoral authorities.
The following is an assessment of the presidential referendum, interpreted as a strategy to transit toward what the President calls the Fourth Transformation (4T) of public life, a historical stage beyond neoliberalism. Rooted firmly in the democratization of power and institutions — including the electoral institutions — a new political culture is being nurtured from the ruins of civic apathy and political discontent.
Putting the President on the ballot: A win-win referendum
There is a null chance that the President will lose the referendum. His high approval ratings, a likely low turnout due to structural factors and abstention by the opposition, make this electoral exercise a win-win for the President and his party. From Morena’s perspective, there won’t be the political resolve to carry out the referendum during future administrations, and this newly acquired political right will remain dead on paper if it is not implemented now when the sitting president has historically high approval ratings. Thus, by going through with this consultation process, López Obrador will make history as the first Mexican president to submit himself to a referendum, in what is a low-risk practice run that will cement this electoral mechanism in political life and the civic consciousness.
However, beyond the public discourse of political rights and participatory democracy, decision-makers and strategists within Morena openly admit among themselves that the referendum is a political ploy to put the President on the ballot to benefit the party in the 2022 local elections. In political science, this phenomenon, known as the coattail effect or the down-ballot effect, refers to the automatic bump in electoral preferences for candidates that belong to the same political party as a popular leader, in this case AMLO. For instance, the landslide victories in the 2018 elections at every level of government were largely due to AMLO’s candidacy that year. The intention this 2022 was for the referendum to be concurrent with the local elections in six states taking place in June; this would purportedly increase voter turnout and boost Morena’s numbers in the ballot box. However, the opposition expectedly obstructed this timetable and the National Electoral Institute (INE) slated the referendum initially for March, but then postponed it to April.
Obstructionism from the electoral authority
Forty percent of registered voters must vote for the results of the referendum to be legally-binding. Since political parties are forbidden from promoting and participating directly in the referendum, a civil association staffed by Morena operatives was created to execute the get-out-to-vote campaign. Parallel groups and covert structures also sprang into action, resulting in a sprawling territorial operation, but several factors are working against their mobilization goals.
Being a non-presidential election, out of sync with congressional and gubernatorial elections, the electorate is less likely to vote. Moreover, the lack of coordination and the competition between the parallel efforts (a reflection of intraparty divisions) are impediments to maximize turnout. It does not help that opposition parties are calling for a boycott of the referendum and the INE, whose president Lorenzo Córdova is openly sympathetic to the opposition, is doing everything possible to obstruct the election. For its part, the Institute magnifies every instance of non-compliance with electoral regulations to issue sanctions and generate obstacles. This is possible since the referendum mechanism has never been implemented before and there is enough room for interpretation in legal gray areas to hinder the process.
The Electoral Institute began by outright refusing to execute the referendum, alleging lack of funds right after the congressional approval of the 2022 budget. The Supreme Court ruled the Institute should adjust its budget and carry out the democratic exercise, but the INE persisted in its recalcitrance by dragging its feet in tallying the signatures necessary to activate the electoral mechanism (3% of the electoral rolls).
Additionally, it postponed the date of the vote and reduced voting stations to less than half of those installed during a constitutional election. The reduction of polling centers gave INE bureaucrats a blank slate to reconfigure voting demarcations for the referendum. Logically, this lent itself to gerrymandering, as the INE had free rein to pick and choose which “Electoral Sections” would be combined into new “Territorial Units” (UTs). Rather than obeying technical guidelines, these UTs turned out to be little more than contrivances for voter suppression.
For instance, in rural municipalities and those with logistically onerous geographies, polling places were drastically curtailed and concentrated in a single community, usually far away from other population centers, making it next to impossible for people to cast their votes. For some communities, this means hours of travel through unpaved, winding roads in inhospitable terrain. In urban areas, polling centers were approved in atypical locations and wealthier zones, far removed from Morena’s traditional electoral base, as party representatives have accused. Whereas a working mother could walk a few blocks to her usual polling station, this time she will have to travel kilometers by car or public transit to a school in an upscale neighborhood to cast her vote.
The public outcry and legal challenges against such decisions by the INE have fallen on deaf ears. However, the outright partiality in the INE’s decision-making has forced the electoral authority into the open, eroding its public credibility as it assumes the political cost of playing the role of an opposition actor.
Electoral Reform: forcing the INE into the open
The president of the National Electoral Institute, Lorenzo Córdova, has long abandoned any vestige of impartiality, but the institute retains considerable legitimacy and support in public opinion, particularly among the political opposition and the NGO ecosystem. The strategy of forcing the INE to organize the referendum forced the electoral authorities to assume an even more openly adversarial position that continues to diminish their legitimacy. This has allowed the president to call out their undemocratic bias, giving him the political ammunition to demand a depuration and democratization of electoral institutions.
By forcing the INE to assume the political cost of operating as an opposition actor, AMLO is courting public opinion to garner support for his controversial Electoral Reform. This legislation would aim to democratize the INE and the Federal Electoral Tribunal by subjecting these authorities to election by popular vote open to the public. Currently, INE councilors and electoral magistrates are selected by the Legislature from shortlists of candidates screened by high-ranking politicians in both houses of Congress (councilors by the lower house, magistrates by the Senate).
Ever since 1996 when the electoral body was first defined as autonomous, there has been a selectorate of elite politicians and interest groups that negotiate the makeup of the electoral authorities. Despite the various legal modifications since then, the nature of the selection process has subjected the electoral bodies to institutional capture, rendering them autonomous in name only. In part, this explains the confrontation between the electoral authorities and 4T governments, since the electoral bureaucracy is a remnant of previous neoliberal administrations. Notwithstanding, prominent civil society groups and opposition parties attack the president as an “authoritarian populist” for these clashes with the INE, mainly its president, Lorenzo Córdova, who has taken up a prominent activist role in a nominally impartial institution.
Galvanizing political capital
The timing of this electoral exercise is strategic. AMLO coupled the referendum campaign with the nationwide discussion on the Electricity Reform meant to establish majority state control over the energy sector and the lithium industry. The legislative initiative has polarized public debate, but the 4T’s effervescence over the referendum has fortified public support of the Electricity Reform in the face of an onslaught against the proposed legislation from traditional media, private firms and lobbyists posing as “impartial experts.”
Moreover, the President has already announced he will forge through with other high-stakes constitutional amendments, besides the Electoral and Electricity Reforms, like an overhaul of the National Guard; a complete review of the Judicial branch; and an ambitious restructuring of the federal bureaucracy. Thus, the presidential referendum doubles as a strategy to force AMLO’s political agenda into the national discussion, at the same time that it rallies the Fourth Transformation’s electoral base, bolstering the president’s political capital.
Revolutionizing political life: the Fourth Transformation
The referendum mechanism is undoubtedly an expansion of political rights. It runs in the same vein as other policies by the current anti-neoliberal government aimed at the dignification of public life and the devolution of political power to the people. In this sense, it is a substantial leap toward the consolidation of an authentic participatory democracy in the country: no longer will citizens have to endure six years of an unpopular government should neoliberalism return to the halls of power.
Beyond the legal transformations and the language of political rights, the referendum is a historical attempt to inject vitality into a burgeoning popular democracy. Interpreted from this lens, it is an exercise in political education and political praxis, by materializing a concrete precedent that sovereignty is situated in the masses. El pueblo pone y el pueblo quita, as President López Obrador likes to say. The people appoint and the people remove.
The referendum is the President’s attempt at fostering a participatory democracy, making citizens see themselves as protagonists, as political subjects with power and rights. It is the empowerment of a politically apathetic citizenry aimed at transcending to a new order, the Fourth Transformation.
Revolutionary processes are those in which social relations are radically reconfigured. Institutions and identities are redefined as the old order is uprooted. In this transition, the revolution functions as a state of exception in which the extraordinary becomes quotidian, the atypical becomes ordinary. After all the weeks of canvassing, mobilization and campaigning, this Sunday, April 10, will mark an incremental step in the process of peaceful revolution led by Latin America’s largest social movement.
