Leftist candidate worries Mexican elite

I wonder who would have won if there was a second round between the leading two...

Thats an interesting question - I'm sure the runoff players would put a buncha effort into courting the followers of the minor parties most closely aligned with their own tickets. I assume, without real knowledge basis, that in Mexico the minor parties would trend more leftward, so that prolly would be a major factor, too.

Any thoughts on the weekend - is violence a likely development?

fbaezer
fbaezer, what do you think of Former Mexican Foreign Minister Jorge Castaneda ideas for reform in Mexico?

BBB

Yeah, lets hear those ideas!

Violence huh? Well, I'm not sure how much emphasys the PRD is going to put in the weekend's marches. But, if hundreds of thousands congregates in the capital, the PAN would be wise if they don't get in their way. Here up north I think nothing is really going to happen.

Violence? Not likely, even if some radicals would love to.

Second round? IMHO it would mean a Calderón landslide.
PRI voters are usually very conservative even if the official, but forgotten ideology is closer to AMLO than to Calderón (in fact, in an ideological map they consider themselves "right wing" in opinion polls, but not the American or European meaning of right wing... if you analyze further, what they mean is "no change").
An open PRI endorsement would probably backlash. So I don't know if any one would ask for it.
PANAL voters already voted Calderón (Campa got a measly 1%, the party got near 5% for the House).
Mercado's voters would be split by half, I think.

Castañeda... I think we've discussed him.
As I've said, he has a bright mind and has contributed to Mexican democracy. His political standpoint is blurry, at least for me.
Personally I believe he does not have a chance to become president. He's blond. His second last name is Jewish. And he's a pro-US leftist. Every element conspires against him.

Source

!!!

The only fact that english people are keeping track and building an opinion about our elections surprise me. But the type of opinion they will have, with this article, hits me even more! Curiously this type of information doesn't reach our land as explicit as you show it.

Mmm... I'm gonna create a "send-a-forward" strategy!

I really think that counting vote for vote would not only show us the truth, but, even if Calderón did win (as I think happened), the issue will be cleared for ever. The masses would calm down and the people who didn't vote for him would recognize his victory. Again, he won with 1/3 of the votes, BUT only around 58% of the registered people voted. So... 1 of each 5 mexicans want to see him seated in the presidential chair.

If the issue isn't resolved, when we remember the 2006 elections there will be unanswered questions and many doubts. Similar to what happened in 1988 with Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas (who's son has been getting closer with Calderón), or in 1994 with Diego Fernández.

Humm... what surprised me EVEN more where the people's negative comments toward the columnist and diary. What is the image that The Guardian has in England?

I suppose, you should at first look at what image Greg Palast has :wink:

The Guardian is a center-left liberal paper - 44% of Guardian readers vote Labour and 37% vote Liberal Democrat.

"Center-left liberal"? Dang, and I thought the new names in footbal positions/formations where confusing.

There will be a time when all the words that we type will have an inherent Wikipedia definition link to it. Cool.

I think, this IS worth to be mentioned, since in Europe liberal mostly indicates some more right position (due to the position of a cople of liberal parties and because they are generally close to the big industry/business).

I play left defense myself..

There - instead of the left/right business, they should just start identifying people and parties by position on the field.

AMLO seems like a striker, but he hasnt scored a goal yet.

The Cristiano Ronaldo of politics.
Lots of diving and trying to confuse the referee!

Boo. Ex-President Echeverría has been granted his "freedom". Another point for Fox's achievements, just besides the negotiations with Bush. Was that a political move or what?

I don't know fbaezer, but if Calderón's triumph can be proved 100%, it better have. Unfortunately nor the businessman, nor the clergy, nor the politicians, nor the americans, not even the media wants the votes counted one by one. It's funny how - here at least - middle and upper class people say "Someone better shut Obrador's mouth already" when the lower class says "We've been robbed".

Hee. You make your case with wit..

Mr. Clean is quite a hypocrite too. How can he invite AMLO to a spot in his gabinet when the phrase that made him "win" was that "López Obrador is a danger for Mexico"?

Let's see what happens with the tribunal claims the PRD will present today. After the WC Final of course.

From The New York Times:

Mexico's Leftist Candidate Says He'll Never Concede Defeat



By JAMES C. McKINLEY Jr.
Published: July 15, 2006

MEXICO CITY, July 14 ?- Andrés Manuel López Obrador, the embattled leftist presidential candidate, said Friday that he would never concede defeat, even if a recount of all ballots upheld a victory for his opponent, Felipe Calderón. But he added that if the courts did order a recount and he lost, he would call off demonstrations.

"For me this election is fraudulent from start to finish," Mr. López Obrador said in an interview broadcast on CNN.

Mr. López Obrador seemed to be pressuring a seven-member electoral tribunal to order a recount while, at the same time, positioning himself to become the leader of a left-wing opposition that will never recognize the validity of the next government, if the court rules against him.

"He doesn't want to be the leader of the loyal opposition," said Federico Estévez, a political scientist at the Autonomous Technological Institute of Mexico. "He's perfectly happy to be the leader of the disloyal opposition, and that's what he is poised to do."

An official tally last week gave Mr. Calderón a slim 243,000-vote victory, but a special electoral tribunal must decide thousands of legal challenges by Mr. López Obrador before determining who won the election. Under Mexican law, only the tribunal can name the president-elect.

Mr. López Obrador is pushing the court to order a vote-by-vote recount of all 41 million ballots cast, arguing there were widespread irregularities and, in some cases, instances of fraud.

He also charges the current government and private businessmen interfered with the campaign. Several businessmen spent millions on advertisements that hurt Mr. López Obrador without mentioning him by name. President Vicente Fox openly campaigned for Mr. Calderón, his party's candidate, a practice banned under Mexican electoral law.

For his part, Mr. Calderón argues that the votes have already been counted ?- on the night of the election ?- and that the court should order a recount only in individual polling places where it finds evidence that mistakes were made. He has challenged the results in 500 districts where he lost, hoping the court will throw out those results and widen his lead.

Political analysts said Mr. López Obrador seemed to be taking an increasingly hard line against the validity of the election, as a tactic to hold together the fractious political coalition that supported him.

"For a politician like Mr. López Obrador, it is always better to say you were robbed of an election instead of recognizing defeat," Leo Zuckerman, a political scientist, wrote in the daily newspaper Excelsior on Friday. "That way you can shift the responsibility for what happened to external forces."

Mr. López Obrador's campaign aides, however, said he was not looking beyond the present battle to persuade the court to order a recount. Although he will never concede, they said, his message on Friday was that he would call off demonstrations if ?- and only if ?- there is a complete recount.

"If López Obrador is saying that he will demobilize the people after a vote-by-vote recount, that is the best solution possible for everyone," said Manuel Camacho Solís, a political strategist for Mr. López Obrador. "It means there would be no crisis."

Ginger Thompson contributed reporting for this article.

Another NYT article:

July 14, 2006
Videos, Doubts, and a Backlash in Mexico Vote
By GINGER THOMPSON and JAMES C. McKINLEY Jr.

MEXICO CITY, July 13 ?- To an untrained eye, the scenes captured on video certainly looked like Mexico's bad old days when votes were stolen instead of won. There was a man inside a polling station stuffing one vote after another into a ballot box.

Andrés Manuel López Obrador, the embattled leftist candidate for president, showed the video to a crowd of reporters on Monday morning and called it proof that poll workers had taken part in a conspiracy of fraud that robbed him of victory and handed it to his conservative rival, Felipe Calderón.

That night, the Federal Electoral Institute, or IFE, and Mr. López Obrador's own representative at the polling station said Mr. López Obrador was misrepresenting the video. The tape, they said, showed a poll worker putting misplaced ballots where they belonged, a common procedure that was perfectly legal.

By then, however, doubt had already been planted. Mr. López Obrador has bet his political future that it will not take much to make that doubt grow into a national call for a recount in a country where rigging elections was once a kind of national pastime. His opponents in Mr. Calderón's camp are betting people will see things the way they do: that the only one playing dirty these days is Mr. López Obrador.

In an interview on Thursday, Mr. Calderón, who election officials say squeaked out a victory by 0.6 percent of the vote, said that Mr. López Obrador had not kept his promise during the campaign to accept the election results, win or lose.

"It seems to me that the responsible thing to do is to respect the authorities," said Mr. Calderón, who has yet to be formally certified as the winner, "and not to heighten tensions in the political atmosphere."

"I don't want to launch a personal attack on him," Mr. Calderón added. "What I do think is that Mexico has a solid democratic system, credible institutions, like the electoral institute and the electoral tribunal, and that it's not right that they be discredited, especially without proof."

In the 11 days since the closest election in Mexican history, Mr. López Obrador has tried to discredit those institutions and the election on two fronts. Last weekend he filed a massive complaint ?- including nine boxes of documents and tapes ?- to the Federal Electoral Tribunal, alleging irregularities at more 52,000 polling places and calling for a recount.

At the same time, he opened a campaign to cast doubt on the election, feeding the media daily doses of scandal in videotapes and what he describes as secret recordings and tally sheets with incorrect numbers.

On Saturday in the Zócalo, Mexico City's historic plaza, a confident Mr. López Obrador regaled some 150,000 supporters with a recording of a conversation that he said proved collusion by rival political parties.

He followed up at the press conference on Monday with the now disputed video that he said proved poll workers had inflated vote counts for his rival. He screened another video on Tuesday that he said showed electoral officials illegally tampering with ballot boxes. And on Wednesday, he played a video that he said showed poll workers recording more inflated tallies for Mr. Calderón.

While the tapes were tantalizing, legal experts said they hardly made Mr. López Obrador's case for systematic violations that would support his demand for a vote-by-vote recount, and many analysts were concluding that the campaign was more smoke than fire.

The Federal Electoral Institute has fired back with a campaign of its own, including public service announcements and full-page advertisements in Mexico's major daily newspapers. In a recent press conference, Hugo Concha, a spokesman for IFE, said there was no evidence of fraud in any of the videos.

Nor, he said, were they recorded in secret. Cameras were allowed in district offices during the official vote tallying, Mr. Concha said. And he said the videos screened by Mr. López Obrador showed normal, legal activities.

"In other words," Mr. Concha said, "he is misusing the information."

That seems to be the way Juliana Barrón Vallejo sees things. She is a former factory worker in Guanajuato State who represented Mr. López Obrador's campaign at the polling place where the video shown on Monday had been recorded.

"There was no fraud," she said in a telephone interview. "Everything was clean." Then, referring to Mr. López Obrador, she said, "I think he is angry because he lost, and so he is inventing things."

Comments like those from Ms. Barrón, which have also been reported here in the newspaper Reforma, stung the López Obrador campaign. But Mr. López Obrador's response shook his supporters' confidence even further, as he refused to back away from the video and implied that his own campaign worker had been corrupted.

"I cannot say that all my representatives acted honestly," Mr. López Obrador said at a press conference on Tuesday. "There is a lot of money out there. Unfortunately, some people are willing to sell their dignity."

As for the Federal Electoral Institute, Mr. López Obrador said: "The IFE is trying to cover up an embarrassment that is making news around the world. What we are showing is that in this election we have not moved forward. We have moved backward."

Some, including the leftist scholar Roger Bartra, say that Mr. López Obrador has not only damaged himself, but that he has also set Mexico on a dangerous course.

Other political analysts, like Jorge Montaño, say Mr. López Obrador has capitalized on the overwhelming lack of confidence most Mexicans feel toward their institutions, and has shifted the debate from one about who won the election, to one about whether to reopen the ballots.

"Public confidence has fallen so low," Mr. Montaño said, "that it is almost inevitable there will have to be some kind of verification that Felipe Calderón won the presidency."

Mr. López Obrador's appearances at press conferences and on television this week indicated that he was prepared for a long fight. That became clear in a heated exchange between Mr. López Obrador, the populist former Mexico City mayor, and Mexico's leading news anchor, Joaquín López-Dóriga, Tuesday night:

Mr. López-Dóriga: Where is this going to end, Andrés Manuel? How far are you going to take it?

Mr. López Obrador: To the people.

Mr. López-Dóriga: How far is that?

Mr. López Obrador: As far as the people want and decide.

Mr. López-Dóriga: But you are driving this process.

Mr. López Obrador: Yes, but we are going to drive it democratically.

Mr. Calderón's aides contend that what Mr. López Obrador really wants is to use a recount as the first step to annulling the election. Echoing analyses by electoral officials, they say it is unlikely that a recount would change the results because the candidates would be likely to gain and lose votes in similar proportions.

But any broad recount, Mr. Calderón's aides say, is bound to uncover human errors, and perhaps isolated, but not systematic, cases of fraud, that could be used to throw out all the returns. "The tactic might be a recount, but the endgame is annulment," said Arturo Sarukhán, an aide to Mr. Calderón.

Mr. López Obrador, 53, has repeatedly denied he wants a new election. He won this one, he said, adding, "I am more and more convinced of this."

For his part, Mr. Calderón has stood firm, planning a tour of the country, sending aides to calm anxieties abroad, appointing officials to lead a transition team and playing down the demonstrations in favor of Mr. López Obrador.

"Elections are won at the polls," Mr. Calderón said, "not on the streets."

Oh, oh, and although I didn't read the whole article, I think you forgot to mention that he said that probably his the PRD representants in each booth where probably bought too, after the video fiasco. He doesn't even trust his people...

I'm kinda disappointed.

The second article does.

IMHO both articles fall short.

AMLO's attack on "subliminal" ads was a piece of unintentional humor.
"Watch the color of the can!" he exclaimed, showing a Jumex commercial.
Jumex cans have been blue since AMLO and myself were children. So has been the PAN logo.

And what about the "hidden algorithm"? A mysterious cybernetic fraud by the PREP... and later the prescinct by prescinct recount been forged to match the PREP (and the exit polls, and the prescinct sample fast count).

And calling the IFE "delinquents", even if it's one of the most prestigious institutions of the country.

And telling his people to "put pressure on the media".

And accussing soap operas ("La fea más bella") and comedy shows ("Muévete") of doing subliminal propaganda. As part of a legal case made mostly of newspaper clips.

And saying that, since the "Lopez Obrador is a danger to Mexico" ads are "fascist", the whole election was a fraud.

I personally think we've lost AMLO. He's gone beserk. And I gotta thank those 237 thousand extra Mexicans who held their noses and voted Calderón anyway just to keep this lunatic out of power.



You're a rational person, pohl.

I've met several AMLO voters who have already regretted their choice. And not two weeks have passed from the election.