Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said he was satisfied.

"I'm staying and we're going to continue to transform our country," he said after the results of a referendum on his stay in office were announced.

No one in Mexico had doubted that anyway.

In the polls, approval for the president is more than 50 percent.

That is why very few Mexicans thought the referendum pushed by López Obrador himself was necessary.

The opposition, in turn, had called for a boycott early on, classifying the referendum as a waste of money and a propaganda tool.

Tjerk Bruhwiller

Correspondent for Latin America based in São Paulo.

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More than 90 percent voted in favor of allowing him to complete his six-year term in 2024.

However, significantly less than 20 percent of those eligible to vote took part in the referendum.

Despite the lack of public interest, López Obrador insisted on celebrating the referendum as "historic".

Mexico doesn't have a king, it has a democracy and the people call the shots.

Not the first referendum

In fact, the "recall referendum" was a novelty for Mexico.

Similar instruments exist, for example, in Bolivia and Venezuela, where it was used by then-President Hugo Chávez to demonstrate his support among the population and to secure his power.

According to some observers, however, the vote in Mexico was less about the president himself and more about setting a precedent for using such a referendum in the future.

López Obrador is also likely to use the result to pursue some short-term goals, such as mobilizing his supporters ahead of some states' gubernatorial elections in June.

In addition, López Obrador is seeking support in Congress, where a constitutional amendment for far-reaching energy reform is being discussed,

The referendum was not the first referendum pushed by President López Obrador.

Even before he took office, he had a controversial referendum conducted on the freeze on construction of the new international airport.

When, as president, he ordered the building freeze and launched another project, he was able to refer to the people – although the vote was anything but representative.

Last year, López Obrador let Mexicans decide in a particularly populist referendum whether to investigate a number of previous presidents.

Apart from a lot of polemics and polarization, the vote had no consequences, because the participation did not even reach ten percent.

However, the referendums fit the narrative of the left-wing nationalist president, whose popular popularity rests on a whole range of social programs that have helped the poor population make ends meet during the pandemic and allow him to present himself as the upstanding defender of the poor against a portray corrupt elite.

However, he has not yet kept important campaign promises such as reducing violence.

A premature end to the presidency, however, was always out of the question for the opposition.

This is something for times of crisis, they say.

In addition, there are elections in two years – without López Obrador.

The constitution prohibits re-election.