Development: On 26 November an overwhelming majority of voters who participated in a public consultation organised over the weekend by President-elect Andrés Manuel López Obrador, on the ‘Tren Maya’ railway line in the south-east of Mexico, an oil refinery, and 10 social welfare programmes, supported each initiative.
Significance: Defeat would have been a major setback for López Obrador as it would theoretically have sounded the death knell for major infrastructure projects he promised during his electoral campaign. Unlike the US$13.3bn Mexico City international airport project (NAIM), which was rejected in an earlier public consultation, these are all initiatives firmly backed by López Obrador.
- A total of 89.9% of voters participating in the public consultation backed the construction of the M$150bn (US$7.3bn) Tren Maya, which would link the Caribbean resort of Cancún (Quintana Roo state) to the city of Palenque (Chiapas state), and pass through the states of Campeche, Tabasco, and Yucatán.
- There was a similar level of support (91.6%) for the construction of a new oil refinery in Tabasco, which is part of López Obrador’s objective of ensuring that Mexico reaches the point of refining 100% of its domestic consumption needs and moves towards ending oil exports and imports of refined products.
- In excess of 90% of voters backed each of the 10 social programmes, which include student grants, disability benefits, and doubling the size of pensions for the elderly, with the most support (95.1%) going to guaranteeing medical services and medication for Mexicans without access.
- The public consultation has not been without criticism. As with the NAIM consultation, it was organised by López Obrador’s leftist Movimiento Regeneración Nacional (Morena) party rather than the national electoral institute (INE). Just over 1.3m people took part over the two days on which it was held on 24 and 25 November, in the same 538 municipalities (out of a total of 2,448 in Mexico) used for the NAIM consultation. This equates to just 1.4% of the national electorate of some 90m.
Looking Ahead: Having secured this ‘popular mandate’, López Obrador will move ahead with each of these initiatives as soon as he takes office on 1 December.
