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 News Around the Republic of Mexico | June 2006 
Mexican Presidential Candidates Finish Campaigns
 Mark Stevenson - Associated Press
| Adviser Confident Votes Will Count
Ballots from citizens abroad must be received in Mexico by 8 a.m. Saturday. Registered voters had to apply by Jan. 15 to vote in Sunday's elections.
Raul Ross, special adviser for the Chicago-based Mexican Federal Electoral Institute said any ballots arriving late will not be counted. He was confident that Chicago area votes would arrive on time. "I think close to 100 percent of those registered will vote."
Maribel Soto, a spokeswoman for Federal Electoral Institute of Mexico said that 35,763 eligible Mexican voters received ballots for Sunday's election. In Illinois, 3,603 eligible voters received ballots. As of Wednesday afternoon, she said, 75 percent of eligible voters worldwide had already cast their ballots.
-From Staff Reports (AP Photo/Dario Lopez-Mills) |
Mexico City - Mexico's presidential candidates wrapped up months of mudslinging with final campaign rallies Wednesday, with left-leaning Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador and conservative Felipe Calderon locked in a tight race.
Lopez Obrador, a former Mexico City mayor, chose Mexico City's main square for his final appeal to voters, while Calderon of President Vicente Fox's National Action Party went to one of his party's bastions, conservative Jalisco state.
At the center of Sunday's vote are twin realities: Mexico's vast inequalities and the newfound economic stability that has allowed many families to have homes, mortgages and new cars for the first time.
Pair rally in strongholds
The election will determine whether Mexico joins Latin America's rising tide of charismatic leftist leaders or continues on a path of fiscal conservatism and unbridled free trade.
The sharp contrasts "are the result of an economic model that, even if it isn't worn out yet, has caused social tensions" between the rich and the poor, political analyst Oscar Aguilar said.
Final polls, published last week, showed Calderon running about even with Lopez Obrador, of the leftist Democratic Revolution Party.
The left's strongest base is in Mexico City, whose main square holds more than 100,000 people. Lopez Obrador, 53, had long considered filling the square with supporters to be the ultimate demonstration of his popular appeal.
The plaza also witnessed historic scenes that Lopez Obrador sees as the high points of Mexico's history, such as the 1938 expropriation of foreign-owned oil companies. However, he dislikes Calderon's frequent efforts to compare him to Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, an anti-American socialist known for his angry rhetoric.
Calderon, addressing a crowd of about 1,000 people in the small, western city of Zamora in his home state of Michoacan, promised to unify the country after a campaign that had split the nation by class. |
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