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 News Around the Republic of Mexico | July 2006 
Electoral Court Considers PRD’s Fraud Claims
 Wire services - El Universal
| | Mexican Presidential candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador of the Democratic Revolutionary Party (R) and Horacio Duarte (L), representative of PRD in the Federal Electoral Institute, show a certified document of the Program of Preliminary Electoral Results (PREP) that 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/Alfredo Estrella) |
The Federal Electoral Court began considering a 900-page claim by presidential candidate Andrés Manuel López Obrador which challenges the results of the July 2 election.
López Obrador´s lawyers said they cited mathematical errors in the vote tally and ballot stuffing among their complaints to demand a recount of all ballots.
In a broader claim against the validity of the election, López Obrador argues President Vicente Fox improperly campaigned on behalf of Felipe Calderón, and used government resources to support him.
"If the court is going to allow a recount, which seems tremendously unlikely, it would have to find a legal justification outside the body of laws regulating post-election dispute adjudication," said Todd Eisenstadt, a professor of government at American University in Washington, the author of a book on Mexican election law.
ACCUSATION
López Obrador´s accusation of fraud - from the original counting of votes by citizens to the electoral authority´s tabulation of those counts - presents a challenge to the electoral system established a decade ago to make elections more transparent and reduce interference by political parties. The court is credited with bringing democracy to Mexico in 2000 with the election of Vicente Fox after years of ballot tampering during the seven-decade rule of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI).
The work of the court´s seven judges, a formality in the one presidential election it ruled on since being formed in 1996, has become the center of attention after the Federal Electoral Institute said Felipe Calderón, of President Vicente Fox´s National Action Party (PAN), won the vote by less than 0.6 percent over López Obrador.
"We are specifically asking that they count ballot-by-ballot to bring certainty to the election results," Manuel Camacho Solis, an adviser to López Obrador, said Wednesday in a Mexico City news conference.
López Obrador´s broad challenge asks the court to annul the election, said César Nava, a lawyer from the PAN, which has a copy of the lawsuit. López Obrador, who has declined to make his complaint public, has said he´s not requesting the election´s annulment.
"The annulment of an election is an extreme recourse," Lorenzo Córdova, a professor with the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) who specializes in electoral law, said in a telephone interview. "There would have to be irregularities that really are dangerous for sustaining democracy."
The court said in a statement that López Obrador presented challenges in 225 out of 300 electoral districts and Calderón is challenging 129 districts.
The PAN submitted challenges calling for the annulment of about 500 polling places as a defense against López Obrador´s court case, Nava, who´s heading up a team of about a 1,000 lawyers working on the challenges, said in a news conference Tuesday night.
ANNULMENTS
Calderón´s grounds for the annulments ranged from polling stations being installed in the wrong place to the alleged illegal substitution of voting station workers, Nava said.
The court is unlikely to order a widespread recount because the law puts narrow boundaries on when vote packets can be opened and ballots tallied again, Eisenstadt said in a telephone interview.
"They haven´t been that creative on that grand of scale," Eisenstadt said. "If they were to do so in this case it would perhaps undermine their institution and create a whole swell of controversy."
The court has overturned state elections in Tabasco and Colima, citing interference from the state government to support one candidate, Córdova said. |
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