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 News Around the Republic of Mexico | September 2006 
Mexican Officials to Burn Ballots
 Will Weissert - Associated Press
| | Luis Carlos Ugalde, president of Mexico’s Federal Electoral Institute. |
Electoral officials say they can't legally preserve the ballots from Mexico's disputed July 2 election, and President Vicente Fox's office said Wednesday it won't seek legal reforms to spare them.
President-elect Felipe Calderon and the race's runner-up, leftist Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, have asked the Federal Electoral Institute to save the 41.6 million ballots cast during the election.
Calderon says doing so would help dispel doubts about his narrow victory, while his opponent says the ballots hold proof of widespread fraud.
But in a letter to Calderon late Tuesday, electoral institute chairman Luis Carlos Ugalde said that a 1990 law clearly states that once an election has been decided, its electoral materials must be burned.
Ugalde's response came after Calderon sent him a letter saying keeping the ballots would boost public confidence and "preserve the electoral material as long as possible to contribute to a better understanding between Mexicans."
Ugalde wrote that under Mexican law, "the IFE is obliged to destroy electoral documentation once the electoral process is concluded."
Presidential spokesman Ruben Aguilar told a news conference Wednesday "in no way" is the presidency planning to send Congress new electoral reforms to spare the ballots. He said Fox last year sent Congress a package of electoral reforms, most of which were rejected, and his administration did not plan to revisit the issue.
Ugalde said in his letter that electoral officials will set a date to destroy the ballots, although he did not indicate when that decision would be made.
Calderon was declared the election's winner by a margin less than 0.6 percent last week after the Federal Electoral Tribunal rejected Lopez Obrador's request for a recount of all the ballots.
Calderon's letter requesting the ballots be preserved marked one of the few occasions the conservative has agreed with the man he narrowly beat.
Lopez Obrador wants the ballots preserved because he claims fraud and meddling by Fox robbed him of the election. Fox and Calderon are both members of the National Action Party, and Calderon served as the outgoing president's energy secretary - though he quit after nine months in 2004.
Fox chided him for talking publicly about running for president too soon before the election.
Despite the Federal Electoral Tribunal's ruling - which cannot be appealed - Lopez Obrador and his aides have continued to call for a full recount to erase doubt about the election.
"If Calderon comes out on top in a recount, then this will all be over," Lopez Obrador aide Gerardo Fernandez said Tuesday.
Thousands of Lopez Obrador supporters have set up protest camps in the heart of Mexico City, saying they won't recognize Calderon's victory. They plan to create a parallel government this weekend during an assembly led by Lopez Obrador.
"We are going to abolish the regime of corruption and privilege, and I am sure that the people will not recognize the usurper government that Felipe Calderon tries to head," Lopez Obrador told thousands of supporters in the capital's central plaza on Tuesday. |
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