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 News Around the Republic of Mexico | August 2006 
Mexico Left Holds Lead in Chiapas Vote
 Mica Rosenberg - Reuters
| | Candidate for Governor Jaime Sabines, from the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD), speaks at a news conference in Tuxtla Gutierrez, Chiapas, southern Mexico, August 20, 2006. (Reuters/Daniel LeClair) |
Mexico's main leftist party was ahead by a hair on Monday in a governor's election in the largely Maya Indian state of Chiapas, adding to tension over a fiercely contested July 2 presidential vote.
Juan Sabines of the left-wing Party of the Democratic Revolution, or PRD, had 48.43 percent of the vote with votes in from 93 percent of polling stations, a lead of just 0.29 percentage points over his main rival, according to state electoral authorities.
A hefty 5 percent of ballot box returns had irregularities, meaning the final result will likely be challenged. Chiapas has a long history of political violence and is home to Zapatista rebels who took up arms in 1994.
The PRD's presidential candidate, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, cried fraud after narrowly losing the July 2 election and has led weeks of protests that have raised tension in the country and brought chaos to the center of Mexico City.
A victory for his party in Chiapas would bolster Lopez Obrador's bid to build a national campaign to prevent his conservative rival, Felipe Calderon of the ruling National Action Party, or PAN, from taking office.
Ecstatic supporters dressed in yellow PRD shirts mobbed Sabines and sang in celebration when he declared himself the winner of a divisive race on Sunday night. "We won the election," he said.
But supporters of rival candidate Jose Antonio Aguilar Bodegas also claimed victory and held noisy celebrations in the state capital Tuxtla Gutierrez.
Lopez Obrador's PRD governs Chiapas but Calderon's party threw its support at the end of the campaign behind Aguilar of the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, to try to topple the PRD here.
Still, some PAN loyalists could not bring themselves to vote for the PRI, which ran Mexico for seven decades before it was toppled their party in 2000. It was too late to pull the PAN candidate's name from ballots and he won 2.6 percent of the vote despite party leaders urging supporters to back the PRI.
FRAUD CLAIMS
Calderon's PAN and the PRI both accuse Chiapas' outgoing governor of the irregular use of public funds in the campaign.
Voting was mostly peaceful, election officials said, although there were accusations of vote buying on both sides.
Mexico's top electoral court is examining Lopez Obrador's allegations that thousands of ballot boxes were tampered with in the presidential election, although it is expected to confirm Calderon's victory and declare him president-elect.
The leftists, who have set up protest camps in the center of Mexico City and sporadically blocked businesses and government buildings, want to step up their campaign and prevent Calderon from taking office.
Lopez Obrador sees the Chiapas election as a chance to strengthen his position, and he traveled to the state last week to drum up support for his party's candidate.
Free market champion Calderon visited several PRI governors in southern Mexico last week, trying to win support for economic reforms he hopes to push through once he takes office in December.
A sizable chunk of Chiapas' eligible voters belong to the Zapatista leftist rebel force that burst from the state's jungles in 1994 in a brief but bloody uprising.
The Zapatistas now live in self-governed villages and do not vote in elections. |
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