Mexican president survives recall: Democracy at work or populist stunt?

President Andrés Manuel López Obrador survived a recall vote over the weekend with nearly 92% of those who voted saying he should “continue in the presidency of the Republic until his term ends.”

It was Mexico’s first-ever recall vote, and the president, with his approval polling at 60%, was never seriously at risk of being booted from office. In fact, Mr. López Obrador was one of the biggest proponents of the vote, known as the revocación de mandato.

Partly for that reason, turnout among Mexican voters did not even reach 18%. So what was the point?

For some, including the president, the recall was a new, important democratic tool that puts power in the hands of the people as Mexico’s two-decade-old democracy matures. But for critics, the vote was an unnecessary populist publicity stunt designed either to feed the president’s ego or to allow him to promote himself and his party and garner ammunition to defend future policy moves.

“Democracy needs to become a habit,” President López Obrador, often referred to by his initials, AMLO, said after casting his ballot Sunday morning. “That way no one on any scale is going to feel absolute.”

He expanded on the theme at his Monday morning press conference. “We are in a new stage, not only of representative democracy, but of participative democracy,” he said.

Introducing a recall that could take place halfway through a president’s six-year term was one of Mr. López Obrador’s campaign promises before his election as president in 2018. Instruments of direct democracy have played a central role in his presidency and earlier, when he was mayor of Mexico City.

Yet the recall cost upward of $78 million at a time the government is imposing austerity measures. A February poll indicated that some 50% of Mexicans didn’t think it was necessary.

AMLO’s declaration of victory, despite turnout not reaching the 40% participation threshold required to make the vote binding, raises questions about what his “win” truly means – for the rest of his administration and the future of Mexican democracy.

In celebrating his victory at his press conference, the president said the required participation to make a referendum binding should be lowered to 20% or 30%.

Mr. López Obrador won in 2018 on a platform of bold promises to transform Mexico – root out corruption, lift up poor people, create more jobs, and change the country’s approach to fighting violence. But halfway through his term, he hasn’t delivered on many of these pledges. Amid the pandemic, poverty still rankles Mexico and violence hasn’t abated.

“In a way he won just by getting to hold the recall,” says Jeffrey Weldon, a political science professor at the Autonomous Technological Institute of Mexico in Mexico City. “He is someone who really needs to have love shown to him.”

What will it change?

On Sunday morning, Erika Ramos, an administrative assistant in Mexico City, waited for a hair appointment outside a salon instead of voting in the recall.

“Why bother? It won’t change anything,” she says, adding that she voted for Mr. López Obrador for president but now describes her support as “lukewarm.”

While the opposition vocally criticized the recall, there was no organized effort to take advantage of the vote to try to push AMLO from office. Many told voters merely to boycott the procedure.

“They expected, in a sense, that they wouldn’t win. So why spend the money and time to just give [AMLO] a better showing” via high turnout, says Joshua Spivak, a global expert in recall votes and author of “Recall Elections: From Alexander Hamilton to Gavin Newsom.”

Turnout was low compared with most elections, but higher than what many observers expected. Only 7% of voters turned up for the last referendum vote, which took place in 2021, on whether former presidents should face justice for alleged misdeeds while in office.

Leading up to the vote, some critics feared that low turnout could be used to discredit the National Electoral Institute, and potentially undermine the results of future elections. The country’s electoral watchdog set up the recall vote with nearly half the budget typically allotted for an election, and Mr. López Obrador has spent the past several months attacking the organization and its arrangements.

The recall may serve as a bump for AMLO, but analysts like Luis Carlos Ugalde, president of Mexico-based Integralia Consultores, say the introduction of a recall could change the rules of the game for future presidents.

“Right now we have a very popular president, his mandate is not in jeopardy, but what about ... when the next revocación de mandato may take place?” Mr. Ugalde asked in a Wilson Center panel discussion on the recall last week.

“Of course, this can be an instrument of the people. But let’s be clear, the civic culture in Mexico is small,” he said. “This could be an instrument for instability.”

It could also change how future presidents plan their policy approach, he says. The six-year term suddenly “becomes four years and a plus of two additional years if you pass the revocación,” Mr. Ugalde said. “I think it will change forever how the logic of presidential politics work in Mexico.”

Governments around the world may have legal pathways for pushing an unpopular leader out of office, but they’re typically limited to state or local politicians – not commonly for presidents.

In introducing this recall tool, which can only be tapped halfway through a president’s term and requires gathering some 2.75 million signatures to put into action, Mexico joins the ranks of some of the poster children of democratic struggles in the region, like Venezuela and Bolivia, both of which have held recall votes.

“When he sent this bill to Congress in 2019, AMLO thought that there would be huge numbers of people demanding his removal from office, that the opposition would be mobilizing Mexicans to do that,” Professor Weldon says, calling the vote “irrelevant.”

“He has a lot of critics, but very few are demanding that he leave office.”

Missed chance for debate

Some warn that Mr. López Obrador’s victory could cloud an important missed opportunity to publicly dissect his record during the first half of his term.

“The real danger is that everybody will forget [his win] except him, who will push it,” says Mr. Spivak. “’The voters gave me a stamp, they verified my policies, they like it. Let’s do more!’”

Indeed, in a recorded victory speech late Sunday night, AMLO said as much. “More than 15 million Mexicans are happy and want me to continue,” he said. “I’m staying, and we are going to continue transforming our country.”

The vote was presented as a chance to “ratify AMLO, instead of looking at what he’s actually done,” adds Professor Weldon. “He will use this to continue his path of polarization.” As a populist president, AMLO “needs this gasoline to keep his base alive,” he says.

But Rafa Flores, an engineer in the northern city of Monterrey, disagrees. He voted to keep AMLO in office and is thrilled that Mexicans will have a new tool in their arsenal to further develop democratic participation.

“Some people see it as useless, egotistical, a waste of money,” says Mr. Flores by phone. “This is part of a maturing democracy. I hope that people will get used to being consulted on how their government is doing and delivering.”