NYT: Tensions Grow Over Mexico Vote as Opposition Plans Rally Saturday

[DeepModem Mom]

Tensions Grow Over Mexico Vote as Opposition Plans Rally Saturday
By JAMES C. McKINLEY Jr. and GINGER THOMPSON
Published: July 8, 2006

MEXICO CITY, July 7 — Mexico hung in limbo on Friday, as tensions rose between those seeking a recount in the presidential race and those seeking to accept Felipe Calderón as the winner and move on.

After a tally showed that the two top candidates were separated by 243,000 votes, the election has exposed deep divides in society, along class and regional lines. The voting has put the strength of the young democracy to its toughest test.

A day after election officials said Mr. Calderón, an advocate of free trade, had won the narrowest of victories, the country seemed more on edge than on a high.

Supporters of Mr. Calderón's leftist rival, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, girded for fights in court and on the streets, beginning with a rally scheduled for Saturday. Mr. Calderón's supporters and allies called on Mr. López Obrador to concede defeat for the good of the country.

The uncertainty caused consternation among citizens of all political persuasions....

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/08/world/americas/08mexico.html?hp&ex=1152331200&en=a502c5e6bc285f23&ei=5094&partner=homepage

[Kajsa]

1. Well of course Calderon's people are citing " for the good of the country"

We are watching a re-play of our 2000 election, except this time, it's south
of the border.

Heavens- we couldn't have them counting all the votes as valid,:sarcasm:
that would throw the election in favor of Obrador, no doubt about it.

Viva Obrador!:applause:

[IndianaGreen]

2. Like the GOP in 2000 and 2004: let's move on!

Anything but counting all the ballots, that's the conservative way!

Mr. Calderón's supporters and allies called on Mr. López Obrador to concede defeat for the good of the country.

For the good of the country, Senate Democrats should have joined House Black Caucus and challenged the Florida Electors in 2000.

For the good of the country, the Democratic Party should have sued the State of Ohio for fraud and voter suppression in 2004.

For the good of the country, Obrador must insist on a ballot to ballot recount.

For the good of the country, Democrats must challenge the Republicans at every turn in 2006 and 2008.

For the good of the country, we must start treating Republicans as the Constitutional terrorists and criminals that they are.

[Voltaire99]

8. Well said. (nt)

[Laotra]

10. House Black Caucus

Seems to be the only serious progressive political body that sincerely fights for justice and solidarity in US, like in Florida, re Haiti, and in numerous issues. As constructive criticism they should show even greater solidarity with the (mainly hispanic) immigration movement.

To build a strong social movement these seem to be the best candidates for main building blocks, and white progressives should join them and renounce the myth of white hegemony, as they did during the civil rights movement. To build new democratic rights movement you cannot rely on voting and judicial processes and generally partisan politics (for obvious reasons), you need a movement on streets, you need Other Campaign in US led by blacks and hispanics.

But what do I know. How does this sound to you, Indiana?

[IndianaGreen]

23. Looks like Obrador is going to do exactly what you just said, Laotra

What kind of Democrat would oppose a call to count all the votes? A DINO would!

Mexico is showing us what we should have done in 2000 and 2004, and what we must do in 2008!

Notice how the AP spins the story as one about "refusing to concede defeat" instead of one in which the close election together with evidence of fraud (ballots found in municipal trash dumps) demands that all the ballots be counted.

100,000 protest after disputed Mexican vote

Supporters of leftist candidate Lopez Obrador refuse to concede defeat

MEXICO CITY - More than 100,000 defiant supporters of leftist presidential candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador massed Saturday in a bid to overturn his narrow election defeat with protests that threatened to widen Mexico’s regional and class divisions.

Lopez Obrador told the huge crowd he would present allegations of fraud to the nation’s electoral court Sunday and request that every one of more than 41 million votes be recounted, to expose what he called wrongdoing that cost him the election.

“We are going to ask that they clean up the elections. We are going to ask that they count all the votes — vote-by-vote, poll-by-poll,” Lopez Obrador said to wide applause.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/13759417/

[mom cat]

18. I hope they show us gringos how to fight fraud.

[PSPS]

3. "leftist"

There's that term again. "Leftist." It's become part of the man's name now, just like Barney Clark back in 1982. He was never referred to as "Barney Clark." It was always, "Artificial heart recipient Barney Clark." I think Johnny Carson even did a joke about it, saying that's what it said on his driver's license.

[ckramer]

15. That's the media bias from the US press for sure

[Zhade]

4. Is it really that divided?

I have a hard time believing that, for some reason.

[beltanefauve]

9. So do I

There are WAY too many poor people in that country, and NAFTA is decimating them, for that vote to have even been close, IMO.

[expatriot]

12. i work with several mexican nationals just north of the border.

they live in mexico and commute to work every day. they are not rich (wage workers at a bilingual call center) but definitely, by mexican standards, middle class. They are all huge PAN supporters. These are people that marched in the pro-immigration marches and are very anti-Bush but are very, very happy with what they feel the 'liberalization' of trade has done for them personally and northern mexico. they fear that a 'leftist' like Obrador would give Bush and other U.S. reactionaries the enemy they want in Mexico and the cross-border economy would be disrupted. The border city on the Mexican side 20 miles to the south (Yuma, about 120,000, is 20 miles north of the border, San Luis Rio Colorado with about 250,000 people is on the border on the MExican side) went overwhelmingly PAN.

They are speaking very bitterly of Obrador supporters as "instigators" and "agitators." You definitely have a clear north-south divide. Mexico City and everything south is pro-Obrador.... the blue states so to speak. The relatively well-off industrialized north, the red states. Of course, just like in the U.S. you have pockets of blue in the middle of red and pockets of red in the middle of blue and hell whole lot of purple.



Another thing, is you can't really transpose the U.S. political landscape onto Mexico. For one thing, the "center" on social issues is MUCH further to the right in Mexico than the U.S. while the "center" on fiscal is much further left.

[Joanne98]

19. Well said. This is one of the reason's I'm AGAINST amnesty.

You said.....They are all huge PAN supporters supporters. These are people that marched in the pro-immigration marches.

Now if you give PAN SUPPORTERS a chance to become US citizens, what party to you think they will end up in? Think pro-business, pro-family, pro-Jesus??????? Does this ring a bell?

I already knew this because I grew up on the border and I've never met a LEFTIST immigrant in my entire fucking life.

The immigration bill is a SET-UP. But the good news is, you can now prove that it's the Republicans who are letting everybody in. Look at who voted for Caldero? Tell that to the conservative base in this country and you may save our asses in November. Of course you would have to get the CLUELESS Dems on board and that may be impossible.

[bullimiami]

5. what young democracy? mexico has a long history of dirty elections.

the pri stayed in power for 70 years on dirty elections, pan is just keeping up the tradition.

[Kagemusha]

6. The good of the country, huh

In other words it's not important who wins just that someone does. They don't need to look far north to see how that turns out.

[killbotfactory]

7. Where there any exit polls done?

Just curious.

[Laotra]

11. Yes there were

Results withing statistical error range.

[Sadie5]

13. My own opinion

is that the PAN already have deals with * just as Fox did for the oil. They care nothing about the poor Mexicans. If PAN is allowed to stand as the ruling party watch and see if Calderon's pockets begin to bulge and * will call all the shots in Mexico.

[Peace Patriot]

14. Oh my, consternation, blah, blah, blah. COUNT THE GODDAMNED VOTES!

I'm so sick of these fascist assholes and their goddamned stolen elections and their goddamned SPIN!

COUNT ALL THE VOTES!!! Then there will BE no consternation, no tensions, no civil unrest, no distrust! If you "lose" 3 million-plus votes, then find only SOME of them, and then give it to the fascist by a fraction of a percent margin (.5!), WHAT do you EXPECT people to BE, except tense and completely distrustful?!

Like here, if they wanted to have a TRANSPARENT election, they would have one. The question is, will people continue to put up with this crap? And I don't think the Mexicans will. They have had enough. And on the tension and distrust thermometer, we're next!

[Vidar]

16. Viva Obrador!

[Eugene]

17. BBC: EU says disputed Mexico vote fair

Last Updated: Saturday, 8 July 2006, 00:32 GMT 01:32 UK

EU says disputed Mexico vote fair

Election monitors from the European Union say they found no irregularities
in last Sunday's hotly disputed presidential election.

The EU said its 80 monitors nationwide did not witness any wrongdoing.

Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has vowed to launch protests after the
razor-thin victory of his rival Felipe Calderon.

But Mr Calderon has already begun to spell out his policies and has taken
congratulatory calls from overseas leaders, including US President Bush.

<snip>

Full article: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/5160188.stm

[farmbo]

20. Greg Palast Guardian Update: 827,000 "blank" votes not counted

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,1815750,00.html

Greg Palast
Saturday July 8, 2006
The Guardian


There's something rotten in Mexico. And it smells like Florida. The ruling party, the Washington-friendly National Action Party (Pan), proclaimed yesterday their victory in the presidential race, albeit tortilla thin, was Mexico's first "clean" election. But that requires we close our eyes to some very dodgy doings in the vote count that are far too reminiscent of the games played in Florida in 2000 by the Bush family. And indeed, evidence suggests that Team Bush had a hand in what may be another presidential election heist.

<snip>
Jeb's winning scrub list was the creation of a private firm, ChoicePoint of Alpharetta, Georgia. Now, it seems, ChoicePoint is back in the voter list business - in Mexico - at the direction of the Bush government. Months ago, I got my hands on a copy of a memo from the US Federal Bureau of Investigation, marked "secret", regarding a contract for "intelligence collection of foreign counter-terrorism investigations".
<snip>

As we found in Florida in 2000, my investigations team on the ground in Mexico City this week found voters in poor neighbourhoods, the left's turf, complaining that their names were "disappeared" from the voter rolls. ChoicePoint can't know what use the Bush crew makes of its lists. But erased registrations require us to ask, before this vote is certified, was there a purge as there was in Florida?
<snip>

Remember folks, the Bush family knows how to stael votes before during and after the election.

[Nothing Without Hope]

21. And here are two earlier Greg Palast articles on this dirty election:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=203&topic_id=437351
thread title (6-30-06): STEALING MEXICO - by Greg Palast

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=364&topic_id=1556158
thread title (7-3-06): Dispatch from Mexico City: Stealing it in Front of Your Eyes - Greg Palast

[Judi Lynn]

22. MEXICO'S BUSH V. GORE: Don't Take the High Road

MEXICO'S BUSH V. GORE
Don't Take the High Road

By Ronald Klain
Sunday, July 9, 2006; Page B01

For the presidential campaign of Andr?s Manuel L?pez Obrador, narrowly declared the loser to Felipe Calder?n in Mexico's much-disputed returns, there is good news and bad news. The good news is that he has avoided the two biggest problems that confronted Al Gore in Recount 2000: being forced to contest the election in a jurisdiction where the governor was his opponent's brother, and being tormented by a chief election official who was a partisan operative with a bizarre Queen Esther complex. The bad news, however, is that, where Gore trailed in the initial tally in Florida by fewer than 2,000 votes, L?pez Obrador is more than 200,000 votes behind. It's only a matter of time before the Mexican equivalent of our pundit class begins its demands for "finality."

For L?pez Obrador, the clock is ticking loudly. If he wants to keep his candidacy alive, he must take decisive -- and quite divisive -- action. He must bring meaningful and documented claims of fraud in the election. He must call his supporters to the streets and question the legitimacy of the vote casting and counting process. He must demand that, notwithstanding Mexican law, every ballot be recounted, by hand, to ensure an accurate tally. Above all, he must reject any suggestion that Calder?n received more votes -- indeed, he must insist that any fair count would show that he is the rightful winner.
(snip)

The playbook that L?pez Obrador must follow, if he wants to keep his prospects alive, is the Bush 2000 playbook. Remember the protesters with "Sore Loserman" signs and the crowds near Observatory Circle shouting, "Get out of Cheney's house"? Remember the "Brooks Brothers Riot," bringing an end to the recount in Miami-Dade County? Remember former secretary of state James A. Baker III's condemnation of the Florida courts, and his harsh words for judges who ruled against the Bush campaign? And above all, remember then-Texas Gov. George W. Bush's repeated refusal to accept Gore's offers of reconciliation, and his unflinching (though counter-factual) insistence that the votes had "already been counted and recounted" and that he was the undisputed winner? If L?pez Obrador has a hope at this point, the Bush 2000 strategy is probably his only option.
(snip/...)

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/07/AR2006070701157.html