Some of its defenders argue that it is about taking advantage of a historic opportunity to do civic pedagogy. However, the systematic intimidation against the electoral authorities and the carnival of violations of the law in which the president, officials of his government, local authorities and leaders of his party have incurred in promoting the consultation, does not provide any redeemable learning in that sense.
On the contrary, the process is serving as a pretext, on the one hand, for López Obrador and his supporters to increasingly aggressively challenge the electoral arbiter; and, on the other, to encourage a fallacious but very dangerous antagonism between popular participation and democratic institutions.
Far from being an example of civic virtue, the consultation has become an exhibition of official vandalism.
And also very hypocritical. Because wrapped up in their speech of austerity, from the beginning the lopezobradoristas denied the National Electoral Institute the necessary funds to fully pay for the organization of the referendum. But how much is being spent now on thousands and thousands of “volunteers”, billboards, fences, posters, banners and other paraphernalia to publicize it? And where do all those resources come from?
Even ignoring the illegality that they entail, how is this expense justified in a context of growing budget restrictions, cuts to social programs, medicine shortages, inflation and economic stagnation, so that their supporters can vote for a president who does not “remain”? was going to go nowhere, that he was elected to a six-year term anyway?
This is not a revocation, it is a trap.
On the one hand, the results do not matter because López Obrador is not going to lose. Because of the way it is regulated, by whom and how he convened it, there is no uncertainty in the consultation. Which, by the way, says a lot about its virtues as a propaganda device and also about its defects as a method of direct democracy.
