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 News Around the Republic of Mexico | August 2006 
Mexico Left Still Hopes for Presidential Recount
 Alistair Bell - Reuters
| | A supporter of the Party of the Democratic Revolution's (PRD) presidential candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, holds up a card with the image of Obrador during a protest in central Zocalo Square, Mexico City August 5, 2006. Obrador angrily vowed to push ahead with street protests that have paralyzed the capital after a top court on Saturday rejected his demand for a full recount in a presidential vote he says was stolen from him. (Tomas Bravo/Reuters) |
Mexico's leftist opposition said on Monday it can still win a legal battle for the presidency despite a setback from a court decision to hold only a partial recount of votes from the contested election.
The country's electoral court over the weekend rejected leftist candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador's call for a recount of all 41 million votes from the July 2 election, which conservative ruling party rival Felipe Calderon won by a razor-thin margin of almost 244,000 votes.
Lopez Obrador says the election was rigged against him and has paralyzed the center of Mexico City with sit-in protests.
Ricardo Monreal, a Lopez Obrador's aide, said the recount of 9 percent of polling stations, to begin on Wednesday, might show enough irregularities that the court would order more votes counted again.
"We've not lost interest or given up on our main demand of opening all the ballot boxes," Monreal told reporters in a tent in the giant Zocalo square, where thousands of Lopez Obrador supporters are camped out. "The court has the power to take measures to order a recount of more boxes."
Mexico, which only did away with one-party rule six years ago, has never had such a post-election legal fight so the rules are open to interpretation by the court, Monreal said.
Lopez Obrador warned his supporters over the weekend that his fight to overturn the result could be a long struggle. He will lead a demonstration outside the court, in an outlying district of the capital, on Monday night.
Mexico has beefed up security at Mexico City airport, power plants and oil refineries in case the leftist protests spin out of control.
The court has to decide by September 6 who is the definitive winner of the vote, which split Mexico along class lines only six years after President Vicente Fox ended seven decades of rule by the Institutional Revolutionary Party.
Lopez Obrador's Party of the Democratic Revolution vowed on Sunday to stage protests wherever Fox, from Calderon's conservative National Action Party, holds public events.
PRESIDENTIAL SECURITY
The president will follow a normal routine of engagements throughout Mexico this week, spokesman Ruben Aguilar said on Monday. "His security will be the same as always."
Lopez Obrador says Fox, who ended 71 years of one-party rule at elections in 2000, is a "traitor to democracy" for openly backing Calderon during the election campaign.
Manuel Camacho Solis, an advisor to Lopez Obrador, said that although the court decision to hold a partial recount fell short of what the left sought, it did disprove conservative claims of a clean vote.
"The court's ruling damages the argument that this was a perfect election," he said.
The partial recounts, mostly in northern and western areas where Calderon did well, is expected to be finished by Sunday. It would be a victory for Calderon, a former energy minister, if they show little change from the original results.
But systematic discrepancies would boost Lopez Obrador's claims that the election was stolen from him, even though European Union observers say there was no evidence of major fraud.
Lopez Obrador, who supports more state involvement in the economy, has annoyed residents in the capital by clogging up the main Reforma boulevard and the Zocalo for more than a week. Supporters have set up home in tents there.
"I agree with them protesting, but not like this. He is shooting himself in the foot and hurting those who voted for him," said frustrated commuter Alberto Garcia, 43.
(Additional reporting by Miguel Angel Gutierrez) |
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