Protesters head for Mexico City

[Judi Lynn]

Protesters head for Mexico City
Originally published July 13, 2006

MONTERREY, Mexico // Supporters of leftist presidential candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador headed to Mexico City yesterday, leaving mountain towns and sprawling industrial cities to demand a ballot-by-ballot recount. Protesters gathered outside the country's 300 electoral districts before heading to the capital, where a mass rally is planned for Sunday to denounce official results showing conservative Felipe Calderon as the apparent winner of the July 2 election. Lopez Obrador has filed legal appeals challenging Calderon's nearly 244,000-vote advantage.
(snip/)

http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/nationworld/bal-te.world13jul13,0,4088781.story?coll=bal-nationworld-headlines

[skids]

1. Sheesh no bias there...

:eyes:

[midnight]

2. It looks like our Neighbor's to the South will show us how

Democracies should function.

[mom cat]

3. Hope we learn about protesting here too!

[the other one]

4. Obrador is a "leftist", so why isn't Calderon a "right-winger"?

"leftist" is considered a negative slang term for liberal, so the conservative should get the equivalent negative slang term. I think "right-winger" is appropriate, although "wing-nut" will do.

Wing-nut candidate Calderon is claiming victory over populist candidate Obrador. That sounds much better.

:)

[robinlynne]

5. How about Bushbuddy. or choicepoint baby.

[Sadie5]

7. This sounds just like 2000

Only the Mexican citizens want to fight for what is rightfully theirs. They know that *s pal Calderon will keep them poor while he lives like a king. Remember how * went forward as if he were the winner picking out a cabinet, then the SS made the decision that changed the US forever.

[arcos]

8. "Leftist" is not negative slang...

Much less for the word "liberal". "Liberal" in Latin America (and nearly everywhere else except the US) is usually considered a free-marketer right winger.
The liberal in this race is Calderón, who supports NAFTA.
López Obrador is the populist, and yes, the leftist, because he is the one who wants to increase social spending so that everyone can benefit and not only the wealthy elites.

Leftist is not a bad word, and it's time for DUers to stop seeing it that way.

[the other one]

9. I think you are defining a different term.

For U.S. consumption, the word "leftist" does indeed carry negative connotations (or at least I believe that the MSM wants you to feel that way). The news sources that I am referring to are for U.S. consumption. They are trying to paint Obrador and other populists as communist or socialist. At least that is what I think.

You are correct that the United States is a "liberal democracy" and all the other "free-market" definitions that go along with that. But that is a different usage, and not the one that is being communicated. Using your definition, Bush is a "leftist", but I don't think you would make that argument because it confuses the issue. In fact it confuses the issue in a mirror image of the way the terming of Obrador as a "leftist" does.

I agree that populist or progressive is a better word.

[The Count]

6. Democracy - use it or lose it!

It appears that it's not an import-export article, but rather something you fight for. Try telling that to the QVC Nation.

[Acadia Blue]

10. Americans did not have the courage these people had. Why

didn't we take to the streets when Bush stole 2 elections?

[Megahurtz]

11. Good. It's about time the Mexicans

stood up against this crap. They have been silent and putting up with abuse for years.

I hope the protest gets huge!

[Acadia Blue]

12. You know the left guy really won. The majority are poor, and the

middle class is paper thin, and 3 families own over 99% of the assets of the country. The right wing pigs stole it again.

[Judi Lynn]

13. Peasants head to Mexico City for vote protest

Peasants head to Mexico City for vote protest
Thu Jul 13, 2006 7:41pm ET

By Greg Brosnan

TEMIXCO, Mexico (Reuters) - Angry peasants trudged through the mountains of southern Mexico on Thursday toward the capital in a nationwide protest to support a leftist who says he was robbed of the presidency in the July 2 election.

"If there is no solution, there will be revolution," some 1,000 leftists chanted as they walked along a road near the town of Temixco to back Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador.

An anti-poverty crusader, Lopez Obrador lost to conservative Felipe Calderon by less than one percentage point and has appealed to an electoral court to demand a vote-by-vote recount, saying the original vote tallies were altered.

Protesters from around Mexico, some walking, others in buses and even a few on horseback, headed for the capital where Lopez Obrador, Mexico City's former mayor, will lead a huge protest on Sunday to draw attention to his fraud accusations.
(snip)

We the poor have always been trodden on. They want to make us disappear. We are not going to forgive them. If we have to lose our lives, then so be it," said Alejandro Zabaleta, 60, who grows corn in the poor state of Guerrero.
(snip/...)

http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=winterOlympics&storyID=2006-07-13T234041Z_01_N28358335_RTRUKOC_0_US-MEXICO-ELECTION.xml

[drduffy]

14. God, I hope they succeed....

If all those hundreds of thousands cannot compel a recount.... then how can we?

And if many die (as has happened so often in Mexico's past) can we be willing to die for our Republic?

Or are we just talk?

[Judi Lynn]

15. Mexico's poll worker training is weak link

Mexico's poll worker training is weak link
By S. Lynne Walker
COPLEY NEWS SERVICE
July 14, 2006

PUEBLA, Mexico – The dispute over the winner of Mexico's presidential election has revealed a nagging problem with the country's voting system: It relies so heavily on poorly trained poll workers that the mistakes they made in counting the votes may have changed the outcome of the July 2 election.

When electoral officials opened selected ballot boxes last week, they found in almost every case that votes had been miscounted.

Sometimes, the miscount favored the apparent winner, conservative Felipe Calderón. Sometimes, it favored leftist Andrés Manuel López Obrador. In Puebla, a southern state where 4 percent of the ballot boxes were opened, 1,800 uncounted votes went to the two battling candidates and third-place candidate Roberto Madrazo.

Such errors, coupled with López Obrador's demand that the vote be annulled, have left many Mexicans with the uneasy feeling that this was not the clean election they'd been promised.

As the Federal Electoral Tribunal, or TRIFE, reviews López Obrador's allegations of fraud, some supporters of Calderón's National Action Party and even some electoral officials are beginning to say there should be a recount before the Sept. 6 deadline for declaring the next president.
(snip/...)

http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/mexico/20060714-9999-1n14mexelect.html