 |
|
|
 News Around the Republic of Mexico | July 2006 
Leftist Mexican Candidate Files Legal Challenge to Presidential Election
 AFP
| | Supporters of leftist candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador filed a formal request with Mexican electoral authorities demanding a full recount of the July 2 presidential election. Horacio Duarte (L) of the Democratic Revolutionary Party (PRD) shows the request to photographers at an electoral office in Mexico City. (AFP/Eunice Adorno) |
Supporters of leftist candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador have filed a formal request with Mexican electoral authorities demanding a full recount of the July 2 presidential election.
In the late Sunday filing supporters of Lopez Obrador, who narrowly lost the election to conservative Felipe Calderon, claim the election was riddled with mistakes and abuses that include problems at 50,300 voting sites.
To support their case they presented a 900-page document along with notarized witness accounts, video recordings and other information to support the allegations.
The main content of the document is "the demand for a vote-by-vote, voting booth-by-voting booth recount," Ricardo Monreal, a member of Lopez Obrador's campaign, told reporters.
Lopez Obrador supporters claim there were problems with the preliminary result count as well as the official count, in which their candidate lost by nearly 244,000 votes.
"We are not going to recognize Calderon's triumph if it is not legitimized by a vote-by-vote recount," said Gerardo Fernandez, a spokesman for the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD), Lopez Obrador's group.
Lopez Obrador alleged that President Vicente Fox illegally campaigned in favor of Calderon, that Calderon's ruling party far exceeded campaign spending limits, and that the party bought votes.
Mexico's top election judge said in an interview published Sunday that a full recount is both impractical and illegal.
"It is not legally valid to unpack the votes and do a recount," Leonel Castillo, who presides over the Federal Electoral Tribunal, told the weekly Milenio Semanal in an interview carried out before the election.
Castilo however said that partial results by polling booths could be questioned, in which case officials would carry out a recount at those sites.
PRD officials were also to take the case to Mexico's Supreme Court, which can issue recommendations to the tribunal, the final arbiter of electoral disputes. The tribunal has until September 6 to issue a ruling.
On Saturday, a massive crowd, estimated at 280,000 by authorities and 400,000 by organizers, protested Calderon's victory in Mexico City's huge central Zocalo square and neighboring streets.
"We are certain we triumphed on July 2," Lopez Obrador told the crowd, claiming widespread irregularities marked the electoral process that gave victory by a razor-thin margin to conservative Felipe Calderon, of the governing National Action Party (PAN).
"There is clear evidence that they took away our votes to favor the right," said Lopez Obrador, the former mayor of Mexico City.
PRD officials have also called for a series of nationwide protests starting Wednesday, including a march from the country's 300 electoral districts to the capital.
The planned wave of protests have a precedent: in 1988 leftist candidate Cuauhtemoc Cardenas was running ahead in the vote count when the computerized vote counting system mysteriously crashed.
When it was restored, Carlos Salinas de Gortari from the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) was ahead in the count and eventually declared the winner. Cardenas followers held nationwide protests for weeks. |
| |
|
Vallarta Weddings
Tell a Friend
Site Map
Print this Page
Email Us