Sunday’s national referendum on whether former presidents of Mexico should be prosecuted for alleged past misdeeds attracted just over seven percent of the electorate – far short of the 40 percent required to make it legally binding.
The consulta popular touted by federal authorities as an “exercise in participatory democracy” had been slammed by opponents of President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador as nothing more than a public relations stunt, since the outcome of the vote was never going to be in doubt. More than 97 percent of Mexicans who went to the polls on the weekend voted in favor of the proposition to strip the former chief executives of their immunity from prosecution.
Due to the intervention of the Supreme Court regarding the referendum’s constitutionality, the question on the ballot did not name any specific former presidents, although it was generally accepted that Lopez Obrador’s five predecessors were always the prime targets of the public consultation. (Pre-referendum memes and social media postings of presidents Enrique Peña Nieto, Felipe Calderon and Carlos Salinas de Gortari standing trial or languishing in jail circulated widely.)
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