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 News Around the Republic of Mexico | March 2008 
Founder of Mexico's Main Leftist Party Calls for Annulling Leadership Vote
 Mark Stevenson - Associated Press
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| | Cuauhtemoc Cardenas | | |
Mexico City - The founder of Mexico's main leftist party said Friday the organization was "irreversibly damaged" by fraud-tainted internal leadership election and called for annulling the March 16 vote.
The bitter dispute over leadership positions in the Democratic Revolution Party pits moderates against hard-liners who refuse to recognize the government of Mexican President Felipe Calderón. Embarrassingly, rivals within the party are now accusing each other of using precisely the kind of vote fraud they claim Calderon's supporters used to win the 2006 presidential elections.
For a party that led a two-month-long blockade of downtown Mexico City in 2006 to protest alleged fraud, the stern warning by party founder Cuauhtemoc Cardenas, posted on his Internet site on Friday, was stunning.
"The systematic violation of the rules and the absolute loss of any ethical principles . . . have irreversibly damaged the organization," Cardenas wrote in an open letter to party members. He called for an interim party president to be named until new elections can be held and for the resignation of current party leadership bodies.
"The party, in its present condition, is unable to fulfill its responsibilities to the people and the nation."
Party President Leonel Cota later responded with a statement saying that he respected Cardenas, but downplaying the issue, claiming that "the irregularities are frankly isolated in relatively few precincts."
In the March 16 internal party election, both sides accused each other of stuffing ballot boxes, stealing voting urns, paying or pressuring voters and altering vote counts.
In one instance, supporters of a main contender to lead the party reportedly broke down a door, stole ballot boxes, loaded them aboard a bus and fled down a highway - with stolen ballots spewing out the windows until the vehicle was detained by rival members of the party.
"In these conditions, the party's leaders and elections commission have no other choice but to annul the elections," wrote Cardenas, who was one of the founders in 1989 of the Democratic Revolution Party and served twice as its presidential candidate.
In 2006, PRD presidential candidate Andrés Manuel López Obrador lost to Calderón by half a percentage point. López Obrador alleged that the contest was stolen from him by fraud and has refused to cooperate with Calderón's administration.
López Obrador has not taken a public position on the internal party vote. His close ally, Alejandro Encinas, who favors a hard line against the president, was virtually tied with party moderate Jesus Ortega, with 70 percent of the votes counted.
The PRD is the second-largest party in Congress' lower house and the third-largest in the Senate, so a hard-liner victory could complicate Calderón's legislative efforts, including a controversial proposal to allow private companies to help the state-run oil company to explore deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico. |
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