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 News Around the Republic of Mexico | August 2006 
Mexico Left Gives Up on Electoral Court
 Frank Jack Daniel - Reuters
| | Mexican Presidential candidate, Felipe Calderon, who holds a narrow lead in official tallies from the July 2 presidential race, pauses during a meeting with businessmen in Guadalajara, Mexico on Thursday Aug. 17, 2006. (AP/Arturo Pena-Romano) |
Mexico's leftist opposition party has given up hope of the electoral court handing it a victory in a disputed presidential vote and plans to step up protests to make life tough for the country's next leader.
After weeks of legal battles, street marches and rain-sodden blockades that have brought the center of Mexico City to a standstill, the left-wing party whose candidate narrowly lost July 2 elections said it was prepared for the worst.
The Party of the Democratic Revolution, or PRD, says the election was stolen from their candidate and wants every vote recounted, but expects Mexico's top electoral court to confirm conservative Felipe Calderon's slim victory.
"We are not naive," party spokesman Gerardo Fernandez said on Thursday. "The court is preparing the conditions to impose the candidate of the right."
Former Mexico City mayor Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador almost led the party to its first presidential election win, and he says he only lost because votes were tampered with at tens of thousands of polling stations.
His supporters set up tents in the capital's streets almost three weeks ago and despite heavy rain they have not left since, to the increasing frustration of many city-dwellers.
The conflict took a violent turn this week when riot police used gas and clubs to break up an attempt by the leftists to blockade Congress. Protesters responded by throwing stones and about 30 people were injured, including 15 PRD legislators.
Fernandez said the protesters, who have sporadically shut down government buildings, foreign-owned banks and the stock exchange, would take tougher, but non-violent, action if Calderon was named president.
"We'll take it further," he said, adding possible protests could include trying to stop Calderon's swearing in ceremony.
Calderon is favored by most businessmen for his free-market policies. He says the election was fair.
The PRD says it will do everything it can to stop President Vicente Fox, who is from Calderon's National Action Party, from giving his annual state of the nation address to Congress on Sept 1.
In 1994, Lopez Obrador blocked oil wells and organized a mass non-payment of electricity bills to protest an election that was likely stolen from him in his home state of Tabasco.
More than a decade later, thousands of Tabasquenos still don't pay energy bills.
Other possible actions include closing highways and border crossings to the United States, across which millions of dollars of freight is trucked every day.
Calderon won the race by about 244,000 votes, or 0.58 of a percentage point. European Union electoral observers say they detected no major problems in the election.
A partial recount of votes last week is extremely unlikely to change the election result. Lopez Obrador wants all 41 million votes counted again but the court has ruled that out.
"The refusal to recount is because we won and because they know that a vote by vote count will prove Andres Manuel's triumph," Fernandez said.
"We are not going to accept waiting until the next election," he said. "We are going to use all our talent, stamina, and freedom to resist an impostor." |
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