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 News Around the Republic of Mexico | July 2006 
Mexico Leftist Challenges Vote Result
 Lisa J. Adams - Associated Press
| | A woman cries on the shoulder of presidential candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador of the Revolutionary Democratic Party as he leaves his home in Mexico City, in the early hours of Thursday. (AP/Victor R. Caivano) |
Mexico's leftist presidential candidate refused on Thursday to accept election results that showed him losing narrowly to a conservative and launched a legal challenge to change them.
Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, the leftist former mayor of Mexico City, was trailing ruling party candidate Felipe Calderon by a fraction of a percentage point in a recount from Sunday's disputed election.
Lopez Obrador said the vote counts were blighted by irregularities and called a rally of supporters for Saturday in the capital's main Zocalo square to back his cause.
"We cannot recognize or accept these results. There are lots of irregularities," he told a news conference.
He said he would take his complaints to Mexico's highest electoral court, which means disputes over who won the election could drag on until early September.
The call for a rally in the Zocalo square, which can hold over 100,00 people, raised fears of rowdy street protests and further turmoil, added to the weeks of legal wrangling like that which followed the U.S. election in 2000.
Lopez Obrador would ask the court for a new count of every single vote, not just tally sheets which is the normal Mexican way of recounting votes, said his election campaign chief, Jesus Ortega.
After Lopez Obrador lodges a complaint in the coming days, the Federal Electoral Tribunal must declare an election winner by September 6 at the latest. The court's ruling is definitive.
GOSSAMER-THIN LEAD
Preliminary results showed Calderon, a former energy minister, ahead of the leftist by 0.6 percentage points. The recount, which was nearly finished on Thursday morning, had Calderon with an even slimmer advantage.
Calderon, from the same party as President Vicente Fox, celebrated the result but stopped short of claiming victory until the recount is formally completed.
Lopez Obrador complained the recount was carried out too quickly to be accurate and cast doubt on the impartiality of the Federal Electoral Institute, or IFE.
"No one can declare himself the winner," he said. "There are serious doubts over the way the IFE acted," he said.
Mexico's left has been wary of election fraud since a 1988 presidential vote it lost, almost certainly due to government manipulation of the vote count to help its own candidate.
Claims by Lopez Obrador and his aides that Sunday's vote may have been fraudulent are widely believed by supporters.
"They are robbing us. We are ready to continue our fight," said Alejandra Arcos, 50, a secretary, outside Lopez Obrador's campaign headquarters.
About 200 people gathered outside the building to support the leftist. "You are not alone," they shouted.
One elderly woman held a photograph of Lopez Obrador with a fake presidential sash draped over it.
The leftist was highly popular as the capital's mayor, a job he quit last year to run for president. He introduced pensions of just under $70 a month for the elderly and eased traffic by building a second tier to a busy freeway.
(Additional reporting by Miguel Angel Gutierrez)
Past Incidents of Mexico Election Fraud
Associated Press
Major incidents of fraud in Mexico presidential elections:
1988: Early returns show leftist Cuauhtemoc Cardenas leading, but a computerized election system mysteriously fails, and when it is reconnected hours later, Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, candidate Carlos Salinas wins by a narrow margin.
1958: PRI candidate Adolfo Lopez Mateos defeats National Action Party, or PAN, candidate Luis H. Alvarez with 90.56 percent of the vote. Alvarez was not allowed any radio time and was jailed during the campaign on the charge of 'being an opposition candidate.'
1940: PRI candidate Manuel Avila Camacho wins with 93.9 percent of the vote over independent Gen. Juan Andrew Almazan in an election marred by violent clashes and credible accusations of vote fraud. A number of Almazan's followers were persecuted and killed.
1910: Riots break out after elections widely considered rigged give another term to Porfirio Diaz, who rules Mexico for 30 years with an iron fist. Officials say opponent Francisco I. Madero only received a few hundred votes in the entire country. Madero calls the Mexican people to take up arms and fight against the government, launching the Mexican Revolution. |
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