Politics: López Obrador’s airport conundrum
President-elect Andrés Manuel López Obrador announced this past week that he will be organizing a "public consultation" regarding the future Mexico City airport. The consultation plan calls for setting up between 1,000 and 1,500 voting booths in 538 municipalities between October 25 and 28, less than a tenth of the roughly 157,000 that were open for the July 1 presidential election. Organizers project that a mere 0.08% to 0.6% of registered voters will participate. Nevertheless, it appears that this tiny fraction of the electorate will decide the fate of the highly ambitious New Mexico City International Airport project currently under construction on the Texcoco lakebed northeast of Mexico City, and possibly that of López Obrador’s idea of building an alternative facility at the Santa Lucía Airbase. It appears so, though as yet there is no word of just what people will be voting on.
A "consultation" of this nature clearly favors the best organized and motivated stakeholders, who in this case are left and far-left leaning social organizations and environmental activists who have long fought the NAICM airport project of President Enrique Peña Nieto. But what is less clear is exactly what the next president of Mexico hopes to achieve with this supposed ballot initiative.
Does he feel he can avoid appearing to go directly against the wishes of most citizens, who according to polls think that work should be completed on the NAICM – as well as the minority of his own transition team and future cabinet that favor the current airport project – by being able to point to a public vote favoring his Santa Lucía project, no matter how unrepresentative that vote proves to be?
He appears to have worked himself into a corner and perhaps is now looking for ways to avoid a direct confrontation not only with his most ardent and radical supporters, but also with those who are already heavily invested in the airport under construction, and the broader domestic and international private sector, which will see AMLO’s management of the airport conundrum as indicative of the way he intends to govern during the next six years.
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