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 Editorials | At Issue | August 2006 
Election Protesters Dig In But Doubt Victory
 Catherine Bremer - Reuters
| | Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, presidential candidate for the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD), waves to supporters during a rally outside Mexico's Federal Electoral Tribunal building in Mexico City. (Reuters/Daniel Aguilar) |
Cold and wet from marathon street protests over election cheating claims, many supporters of Mexico's leftist opposition leader are losing hope that he can stop his conservative rival taking power.
Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador is vowing to fight on, for years if needed, with street protests to overturn July's presidential election result and stop the ruling party's Felipe Calderon from taking office.
But most analysts see his chances of success as slim, financial markets are betting on Calderon as president and some protesters wonder whether their two weeks camped out in torrential downpours in Mexico City to demand a country-wide vote recount is being taken seriously.
A growing number of Lopez Obrador's supporters are resigned to spending the next six years sniping at Calderon's presidency rather than stopping him from taking power, and think the civil resistance campaign needs a new direction.
"We need to do something more creative that has more impact on society. People are already looking at the protest camps and accepting the situation," said Ernesto Rodriguez, 24, at his tent in the middle of the elegant Reforma boulevard that runs through Mexico City's main business district.
"We need a different type of action that will generate more problems," he said.
Lopez Obrador set up the camps to pressure Mexico's electoral court to recount every ballot in the July 2 election. The court instead opted to recount the tallies at just 9 percent of polling stations.
That narrowed the gap between Calderon and Lopez Obrador by thousands of votes but it was not enough to change the result, and the electoral court is widely expected to confirm the conservative former energy minister's win.
"We need other strategies to pressure the government. For me it's about monitoring every action they take so they govern correctly. The fight will go on," said protester Sara Rios.
VIOLENCE
Demonstrators and federal police clashed on Monday for the first time since the protests began, when leftists tried to set up camp outside Mexico's Congress.
While investors are worried about an escalation of violence and the danger of prolonged political unrest, both the peso currency and stocks have made strong gains since the election.
"We need to use more pressure so the authorities know we are serious. It's obvious we need to step things up. Otherwise I'm skeptical about them doing the recount," said architecture student Carlos Alberto Montano, adding that conditions in the protest camps are sometimes miserable.
"When it rains, it floods all around the tents. It's hard, because you have wet feet and you feel miserable. At night it's horribly cold."
Demonstrators have already blockaded the stock exchange and several foreign-owned bank offices. Lopez Obrador now plans protests for President Vicente Fox's state of the nation speech in Congress on Sept 1. There is talk among protesters of calling a national strike and blocking U.S. border points.
If the bid to stop Calderon from taking power on Dec 1 fails, an aide said Lopez Obrador will head resistance to his rival's presidency and keep up protests at the way the election was handled. Some analysts see strong support for that.
"About 14 to 15 million people voted for Lopez Obrador. They won't all follow this but he has a strong core constituency," said John Ackerman, a professor at Mexico City's UNAM university.
"He is going to be an important political force. I don't see him scaling up the aggressiveness of his actions, but he'll be bothersome to Calderon and he'll articulate a clear voice from the left." |
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