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 News Around the Republic of Mexico | July 2006 
Obrador Cries Fraud with Election Videos
 Greg Brosnan - Reuters
| | Mexican Presidential candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador of the Democratic Revolutionary Party (PRD) presents a video that according to him shows a man filling an electoral ballot box, what would prove electoral fraud in the past 02 July national elections, at the party' s headquaters building in Mexico City. Lopez Obrador will challenge the outcome of Mexico´s presidential election in court and demands a recount of the ballots. (AFP) |
The leftist candidate who narrowly lost Mexico's contested presidential election showed what he called video proof of fraud on Monday and refused to commit to accepting a final court ruling on the results.
Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, the former mayor of Mexico City, has asked an electoral court to reverse a razor-thin victory in the July 2 election for conservative Felipe Calderon of the ruling National Action Party, or PAN.
On Monday, Lopez Obrador played two shaky amateur videos that he said documented cheating by his rivals.
"This is old-style fraud," Lopez Obrador, upbeat and smiling, told reporters, saying similar instances of fraud had taken place across the country
"I am certain the people are not going to permit this abuse," he said, repeating his demand for a nationwide, vote-by-vote recount.
Lopez Obrador also said he would wait to see the court's ruling on his lawsuit before deciding if he would accept it.
"We'll wait to see," he said, raising the threat of an even longer election dispute and instability undermining Mexico's fledgling democracy.
The leftist, who lost by less than 1 percentage point, led a rally of more than 100,000 people in Mexico City over the weekend and has called supporters out onto the streets in protests across the country later this week.
Brushing off the fraud claims, Calderon is already acting as if were the president.
He drew a mild rebuke from the White House for criticizing U.S. moves to fortify the border and deploy National Guard troops to stem illegal immigration, but he got to work on forming a transition team ahead of taking power on December 1.
Using a large screen at his campaign headquarters, anti-poverty campaigner Lopez Obrador played two videos he said were among substantial fraud footage supporters had sent him.
One video showed a purported PAN supporter in the central state of Guanajuato stuffing a ballot box for congressional elections held the same day as the presidential vote.
The other, taken in Queretaro state during the presidential vote recount, showed what appeared to be an electoral official refusing to recount a ballot box that favored Calderon.
FRAUD DENIED
PAN official Cesar Nava denied any fraud and said one video showed a PAN official switching ballots into the correct boxes after voters had cast them in the wrong boxes, a change Lopez Obrador's representative agreed to at the polling station.
The Federal Electoral Institute, or IFE, which runs elections in Mexico, also said the switching of ballots into the correct boxes had been witnessed by representatives of all the major parties.
In the other video, Nava said the recount went ahead and the PAN lost votes from the initial tally. The IFE made no comment on the second video in a communique late Monday.
"This is just noise making," Nava told a news conference. "It is them trying to throw the election into the trash can."
Vote rigging was widespread in Mexico during the 71-year rule of the Institutional Revolutionary Party, which President Vicente Fox defeated in 2000.
But a European Union team of observers said last week there was no major fraud in this election and foreign leaders including President Bush have called Calderon to congratulate him.
Harvard-educated Calderon, 43, is tapping loyalists to lead his transition team but is two or three months away from naming his Cabinet, senior aide Arturo Sarukhan told Reuters.
Calderon said on Friday he would continue Fox's drive to ease immigration restrictions for millions of Mexicans living illegally in the United States, and he chided Washington for some of its border enforcement efforts.
His comments drew a chilly response on Monday.
"Last time I checked, Calderon did not have any official authority over the activities of the United States government," White House spokesman Tony Snow said in Washington.
(Additional reporting by Matt Spetalnick in Washington and Lorraine Orlandi and Noel Randewich in Mexico City) |
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