If Calderon wins, it will boost Bush, and represent a big victory for the right in the Americas, and a turning back of the leftist tide at the Yucatan.

[ 24 June 2006: Message edited by: ceti ]

Some Mexican polls are not reliable. They are, shall we say, influenced by the funder.

Bush is very unpopular in Mexico right now, due to the "repressive wave" of immigration legislation now moving through Congress.

quote:

---

Originally posted by jeff house:
You don't provide a link.

Some Mexican polls are not reliable. They are, shall we say, influenced by the funder.

Bush is very unpopular in Mexico right now, due to the "repressive wave" of immigration legislation now moving through Congress.

I would be very surprised if anyone claiming to support Bush would win.

---

quote:

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PRI is far more friendly to Washington's imperialist designs than PAN is. PAN's far from perfect, but relative to PRI they'd be the good guys...

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Oh no they aren't.

quote:

---

Originally posted by ceti:
This is stunning news: the conservative PAN candidate, Felipe Calderon has pulled even with centre-left PRD candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador in opinion polls. The elections are this July, so Obrador's slump after two years of frontrunner status is a bit worrying. Barraged by attack ads comparing him to Chavez, Obrador has also been attacked by Subcommandante Marcos. Embarking on his own campaign, "from below and the left" the newly christened "Delegate Zero" has also been accused by some of his supporters of an ego trip in search of the media attention that has begun to swing away to other Latin American revolutions.

If Calderon wins, it will boost Bush, and represent a big victory for the right in the Americas, and a turning back of the leftist tide at the Yucatan.

---

Nonsense. Fox isn't Bush's poodle and Calderon will not be Bush's lap dog either.

On the other hand Mr. Obrador has a demonstrated track record of corruption...he was caught redhanded on video tape taking a bribe.

quote:

---

The only pollster to foresee the result of Mexico’s presidential election six years ago suggested on Thursday that the leftwing Andrés Manuel López Obrador would win next Sunday’s vote by a comfortable margin.

In her last public poll before Mexicans vote in nine days, María de las Heras gave Mr López Obrador of the Democratic Revolution party (PRD) a five-point lead over Felipe Calderón, centre-right candidate for the ruling National Action party (PAN).

“Something truly monumental would have to happen between now and next week to make a difference,” Ms de las Heras said on Thursday.

---

The PRD candidate's name is Andrés Manuel López Obrador. His surname is López, but since that's quite a common surname, he's referred to as "López Obrador". (Actually, he's usually referred to as AMLO.)

Time for your nap. Run along now.

quote:

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What Señor López Obrador is offering is a Keynesian alternative to allowing free-market reforms slowly to transform the economy. He intends to boost welfare, provide cheaper utilities to the poor and increase wages by 20 per cent. To fund this, he plans to crack down on corruption and tax evasion, slash bureaucracy and emulate the success of India.

The investment includes ambitious projects such as a new overland shipping route to rival the Panama Canal, a high-speed railway connecting cities and the planting of a million acres of furniture-grade forest. The projects’ sheer scale worries many that Señor López Obrador, the son of a shopkeeper and eldest of seven siblings, could bankrupt the country.

---

quote:

---

Originally quoted by M. Spector:
Señor López Obrador, the son of a shopkeeper and eldest of seven siblings, could bankrupt the country.

---

Well, that's five more siblings than Maggie Thatcher had. Is the problem quantity or birth-order?

Still, it's a shade more insightful than " 'Ooh, he's so handsome,' she cooed."

For a taste of this, look at the exchange between gringo Mexican observers,John Ross and Al Giardano.

I also met some Mexican Indymedia activists who were also definitely on the anti-electoral camp. Although many would privated vote for AMLO, their official position is that the new politics must grow from below.

quote:

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By Tom Hayden

Editor’s note: In this column, veteran social activist Tom Hayden reports on Mexican presidential candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, the Mexico City mayor who is waging a progressive populist campaign for his country’s presidency, and whose plans are sure to incense U.S. conservatives on border states: re-drafting the free-trade aspects of NAFTA that force Mexicans to emigrate northward; turning every Mexican consulate in the U.S. into a legal aid center to defend immigrant rights; and vocal opposition to the militarization of the U.S.-Mexico border.

---

Exit polls may be available then, as well.

Mexico has three time zones; polls close at 6 p.m. local time, and exit polls cannot be disseminated before the last poll closes. Whether polling companies are respecting that rule or not, I don't know.

IFE (the Mexican electoral agency) claims that it will release a "quick count" at 11 p.m. Mexico City time based on a statistically valid sample of voting booths. They hope to have counted half of the ballots by 1 a.m.

If Calderon wins, I'll frown.

Voters will choose the 500 members of the Chamber of Deputies, the lower house. All 128 seats in the Senate are also up for grabs. The PRI is the main opposition party and has the largest bloc in both houses of Congress. Mexico's constitution prohibits re-election of legislators.

Mexico has the parallel (semi-proportional) system used in Russia and Japan. Congress is 300 deputies elected by First Past The Post in single seats, and 200 from party lists proportional to the popular vote, but missing the feature of subtracting the local seats. The 200 PR deputies are not compensatory, but parallel, making the result only 40% proportional.

Last election results:
- Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) 117 local seats plus another 45 on a joint ticket with the Green Party, 62 list seats jointly with the Greens, total 224
- National Action Party (PAN) 83 local, 70 list, total 153
- Democratic Revolutionary Party (PRD) 55 local, 40 list, total 95
- Green Party on its own: 17 list
- Labour Party 6 list
- Convergencia 5 list

Prof. Matthew Shugart is watching the results closely, and will be analyzing them.

[ 02 July 2006: Message edited by: Wilf Day ]

Calderon had a larger lead earlier and Lopez Obrador has been closing the gap.

If the earliest returns are from the most conservative areas Lopez Obrador should have a good chance.

[ 02 July 2006: Message edited by: Ken Burch ]

[ 02 July 2006: Message edited by: Ken Burch ]

AMLO just said "according to our count, we won by less than 500,000 votes" -- that would be less than one percent -- although he was careful not to actually claim victory as such.

It's pouring rain in Mexico City but there seems to be a big crowd waiting for him at the Zócalo (I'm not there -- I was just watching it on TV); of course, they have something to celebrate anyway because the PRD won a massive victorty in DF.

The pollsters claim that PAN won the largest percentage of congressional vote -- 39% -- with PRD winning 35% and PRI 31%. If that's true, then quite a few people voted for PRI congressfolk and senators, but for AMLO as president. It's hard to know how that will translate into seats -- Mexico's electoral system is not really proportional -- but it seems likely that no party will have a majority either in the Senate or in Congress, and it's quite possible that whoever won the presidency will not have the largest block in at least one house.

Still inching closer.

[ 02 July 2006: Message edited by: Ken Burch ]

with 60.43% of the vote in

[ 02 July 2006: Message edited by: Ken Burch ]

quote:

---

Originally posted by Adam T:
M Spector, what is it like having a superiority complex when you are actually a complete moron?

---

85.95% of the vote in.

Beginning to look like Calderon will just scrape through.

[ 03 July 2006: Message edited by: Ken Burch ]

On the plus side, it does look as if the PRD will become the second largest party in the Mexican Congress, passing the PRI, which is continuing what now seems to be a long-term decline.

The real question is, will the PRI move to the left to try to recover the ground lost to the PRD? And, if they do, will it work?

Also, will there be a backlash against the Alternativa for preventing, as it looks like they will manage to do, a center-left victory?

[ 03 July 2006: Message edited by: Ken Burch ]

[ 03 July 2006: Message edited by: Ken Burch ]

Stealing in front of your very eyes

quote:

---

Originally posted by Ken Burch:
It appears, if Calderon does defeat Lopez Obrador, that the Alternativa, a merger of the Social Democracy and Agrarian parties, will be the spoiler. They've taken almost 3% of the vote and Calderon's margin at this point is a little over 1%. Wonder why they couldn't just back the PRD?

---

The PRD is mostly ex-priistas. In fact, many of them are one-time supporters of Salinas. So some people on the left lack confidence in them.

quote:

---

The real question is, will the PRI move to the left to try to recover the ground lost to the PRD? And, if they do, will it work?

---

quote:

---

Also, will there be a backlash against the Alternativa for preventing, as it looks like they will manage to do, a center-left victory?

---

Yeah, Patricia Mercado and those urban feminists should go back to the kitchen where they belong

There will also likely be criticisms against the Zapatista's Other Campaign, which might have convinced enough potential PRD supporters to abstain.

quote:

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It's another repeat of 2000 and 2004 of the US elections. With the margin so razor thin, all types of shenanigans are probable.

---

Just because the candidate you want to win loses, doesn't automatically mean that the election was "fixed".

quote:

---

Originally posted by Stockholm:
The PRI is very much the Mexican equivalent of the Liberal Party of Canada. Now they are smoldering ruin having come in a poor thirds in the race for the Presidency, the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Stockholm:
Just because the candidate you want to win loses, doesn't automatically mean that the election was "fixed".

---

Finally, something we can agree about This comment also applies to Venezuela.

quote:

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The best thinmg about this election in Mexico is that whoevere wins, the country is evolving into a healthy multi-party democracy with competitive elections at all levels. A far cry from all those years when PRI was rigging everything.

---

Control of the mechanisms of patronage and punishment, including the electoral machinery itself, would definitely provide a cushion of several points.

To me it looks like Mexico i9s about to repeat the experience of the Cuatemoc Cardenas Presidential victory, which was stolen from him by massive fraud.

A feminist party like the ASDyC is useless when the dominant left-liberal/social democratic party is already supportive of woman's rights and of gender equality.

They should make like Option Citoyenne and merge. :-)

As for Salinas supporters backing the PRD, that would make very little sense: Salinas' stealing the 1988 election from Cardenas and PAN's working with PRI to block a proper investigation into the fraud is the reason that the PRD even exists.

PRD is basically an alliance of everyone progressive-minded person who once had ties to PRI because of its (now-irrelevant) leftist heritage along with elements the non-PRI left.

[ 03 July 2006: Message edited by: Heavy Sharper ]

Of course, sexism is rife in Mexico. That's not news. The PRD is certainly less misogynist than PAN. However, it still may not put enough priority into improving the conditions under which Mexican women live.

Mercado, in the end, won 2.5% of the vote, or thereabouts. Not a lot. So there's no evidence that her position is popular.

But did it deny AMLO a victory (assuming he hasn't won, which is not yet certain)? To believe that it would have made a difference, you would have to believe that the vast majority of the people who voted for Mercado would otherwise have voted for AMLO. But it's equally possible that they simply would have not voted.

The people who did vote for Mercado are not stupid. They knew that she had no chance of winning the election; the polls have been quite clear about that. So they were, presumably, expressing the fact that they didn't support any of the leading candidates.

And I wasn't saying the Alternativa should have gone back to the kitchens and remembered their place. I don't even THINK things like that. But I do think they might have done better to field candidates only for the legislative elections.

And yes, this does point up the need for at least a French-style runoff election. Although if Mexico had had an outcome like that, it could well have been that the PRI vote would have swung to the PAN just to stop the PRD from winning the second round.

If you could give me some links with information about Mercado and the Alternativa, I'd appreciate it.

[ 03 July 2006: Message edited by: Ken Burch ]

quote:

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The best thinmg about this election in Mexico is that whoevere wins, the country is evolving into a healthy multi-party democracy with competitive elections at all levels. A far cry from all those years when PRI was rigging everything.

---

Stockholm, do you have to be a reactionary on every issue? You seem to adopt the position of providing enough social democracy so that the poor are thrown crumbs, but also the rich don't have to give up their BMWs, eh?

This much vaunted faith in "multi-party democracy"
is also touching.

Doesn't prevent brutalities like Atenco from happening and supported by the corporate media which is just as much monopolized there as here.

quote:

---

Originally posted by Ken Burch:
And I wasn't saying the Alternativa should have gone back to the kitchens and remembered their place. I don't even THINK things like that. But I do think they might have done better to field candidates only for the legislative elections.

---

I did put a smiley after that joke... I'm sure you don't think things like that, but I've certainly seen commentaries like that on Mexican blogs (loosely translated).

quote:

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And yes, this does point up the need for at least a French-style runoff election. Although if Mexico had had an outcome like that, it could well have been that the PRI vote would have swung to the PAN just to stop the PRD from winning the second round.

---

It's possible, but I suspect that more than half of the PRI votes would have gone to AMLO; probably a lot more than half. In fact, quite a few PRI votes did go to AMLO; you can see that from the difference between the congressional vote and the presidential vote.

quote:

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If you could give me some links with information about Mercado and the Alternativa, I'd appreciate it.

---

If you can read Spanish, here's her campaign page:

Patricia Mercado

And a picture of her during the campaign:

quote:

---

quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The best thinmg about this election in Mexico is that whoevere wins, the country is evolving into a healthy multi-party democracy with competitive elections at all levels. A far cry from all those years when PRI was rigging everything.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Stockholm, do you have to be a reactionary on every issue? You seem to adopt the position of providing enough social democracy so that the poor are thrown crumbs, but also the rich don't have to give up their BMWs, eh?

This much vaunted faith in "multi-party democracy"
is also touching.

---

There are wayyy more poor people in Mexico than there are BMW driving rich aristocrats. I have travelled in states of Mexico such as Guanajuato and Jalisco which voted massively for the rightwing PAN party and I can assure you that there is lots of grinding poverty there just as there is in parts of Mexico that voted PRD.

Fear of a slow, painful death has decided many Latin American elections.

BTW, anybody have any idea when they'll start announcing how many seats the parties took in the Senate and the House?

[ 03 July 2006: Message edited by: Ken Burch ]

Anyway, for what it's worth, based on the preliminary results which may not be much more than rough estimates, etc., and on the fact that the Mexican electoral system is a bit complicated so I might not have gotten all the computations correct, my guess is that PAN will end up with about 41% of the both the houses. In the lower house, PRD should get about 32% (28% in the Senate) PRI should get 24% (29% in the Senate). The minor parties will get a few seats in each house.

Note that Mexico's election system is not proportional.

quote:

---

Originally posted by Ken Burch:
it could well have been that the PRI vote would have swung to the PAN just to stop the PRD from winning the second round.

---

quote:

---

. . the PRI may have had some opportunities in rural areas to pad the count for its congressional candidates. Not all polling places are monitored by the opposition. Can the PRI pressure poll-workers? I do not know. But it is not out of the question. Presumably the PRI, if it could pull it off, would prefer the more divided government under AMLO to Calderón and a strong PAN plurality. (UPDATE: Apparently the number not monitored is very small, so this concern expressed in this paragraph may not be so valid.)

---

[ 04 July 2006: Message edited by: Wilf Day ]

Damn.

Why can't the left stop itself from shooting itself in the foot?

Damn.

quote:

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Originally posted by rici:

PRD did really well in and around Mexico City, fairly well in the south of the country, and badly in the north.

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quote:

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PRD did really well in and around Mexico City, fairly well in the south of the country, and badly in the north.

---

The graphic attached to this story highlights the regional disparity:

quote:

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Note that Mexico's election system is not proportional.

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quote:

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I wonder what the source of the regional disparity is. I'd heard in the past that the PAN historically was strongest in the northern Mexican states, but that was in the long years of running losing campaigns against the PRI. I wonder why that would hold up against the PRD?

---

Why do the Conservatives do well in Alberta and not so well in Ontario?
Why does the Labour Party sweep Scotland and the Tories win the home counties?
Why does the SDP win the Rhineland and the former East Germany, while the CDU sweeps Bavaria and Baden-Wurtemberg?
Why does the Left in Italay do so incredibly well in Tuscany and Emilia-Romagna and Umbria and so badly in Lombarby and Sicily?

The list goes on and on and there are good historical reasons for all these patterns.

In Mexico, you have to realize that northern Mexico and the "heartland" in the states of Guanajuato and Jalisco (which are beautiful places to visit btw) are very Spanish, while further south you get more Mayan blood in the people.

quote:

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The question I have is, why no runoff between the top two in the presidential race?

---

Like you have in the US??

quote:

---

quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Originally posted by Stockholm:
The PRI is very much the Mexican equivalent of the Liberal Party of Canada. Now they are smoldering ruin having come in a poor thirds in the race for the Presidency, the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I don't really think that's a very good comparison. The PRI, until very recently, held a monopoly of power by force, lies, rigging, cronyism, corruption, etc.

---

hmmm....lies, rigging, cronyism, corruption - sounds a lot like the Liberal Party of Canada to me! :-)

Seriously though, PRI is just like the Liberals in that they are both these large flaccid, amorphous "natural parties of gpovernment" that coasted for generations on just identoifying themsleves so strongly with the symbols of the state that they almost brainwahsed people into regarding them as national institions without which Mexico could never be Mexico or Canada could never be Canada.

quote:

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Jul. 4, 2006. 05:37 AM
MARK STEVENSON
ASSOCIATED PRESS

MEXICO CITY — Mexico faced the possibility of weeks to months of political uncertainty after the leftist presidential candidate — trailing his conservative rival by a percentage point — called for a vote-by-vote recount, alleging millions of missing votes.

Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, who campaigned on uplifting Mexico's poor, trailed business-friendly rival Felipe Calderon by more than 400,000 votes in a preliminary count — although electoral officials say they'll declare no winner until after a time-consuming official count that begins Wednesday.

"There are about 3 million votes missing," Lopez Obrador told reporters at his campaign headquarters Monday night.

The former Mexico City mayor explained that officials had estimated a voter turnout of about 41 million or 42 million, yet preliminary vote tallies by Mexico's Federal Electoral Institute only showed about 38 million ballots cast.

As a result, the institute's first count is something that "we cannot accept," he said.

Jesus Ortega, Lopez Obrador's campaign manager, added that "in some cases, we are going to demand the opening of ballot packages and vote-by-vote recounts."

Members of Lopez Obrador's Democratic Revolution Party said there were indications that the preliminary count may have been manipulated to favour Calderon's National Action Party, the party of President Vicente Fox. The Federal Electoral Institute did not respond to the allegation.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Stockholm:

Like you have in the US??

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Stockholm:

I think that you just have to accept that not every single solitary "poor" person necessarily believes in "revolution" or "socialism" or even "mildly left of centre social democracy". Some of them probably voted PAN in good faith because they think that free market economnics and free trade are better for them. I wish that wasn't the case - but I think that the left does itself a great disservice when it just dismisses anyone poor who doesn't "see the light" as being stupid or as being duped.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Stockholm:
You do realize that the one place in the US where they "run-off" system is most common is in the south and it was brought in there to make sure that no Blacks could ever win an lection over a split white vote.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Stockholm:

Why do the Conservatives do well in Alberta and not so well in Ontario?
Why does the Labour Party sweep Scotland and the Tories win the home counties?
Why does the SDP win the Rhineland and the former East Germany, while the CDU sweeps Bavaria and Baden-Wurtemberg?
Why does the Left in Italay do so incredibly well in Tuscany and Emilia-Romagna and Umbria and so badly in Lombarby and Sicily?

The list goes on and on and there are good historical reasons for all these patterns.

.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Jimmy Brogan:
Recount demanded in Mexican election

"There are about 3 million votes missing," Lopez Obrador told reporters at his campaign headquarters Monday night.

The former Mexico City mayor explained that officials had estimated a voter turnout of about 41 million or 42 million, yet preliminary vote tallies by Mexico's Federal Electoral Institute only showed about 38 million ballots cast.

As a result, the institute's first count is something that "we cannot accept," he said.

---

El Universo (in Spanish) is reporting that an IFE technician made an estimate of the vote in the 3 million "missing" ballots -- they weren't missing at all; they were in poll reports which had been filled out incorrectly and therefore were not in the preliminary count -- and with those added to the final count from the preliminary report, Calderón's advantage over AMLO dropped to 257,532, or 0.64%. (In addition, there are about 2,000 poll reports which did not arrive in time to make it into the preliminary count.)

Actually, no-one was asking AMLO -- or anyone else -- to "accept" the preliminary count. The preliminary count is just that -- preliminary -- and has no legal status. (Some are now wondering if it's a good idea to do it, but the reason it was implemented, in 1997 I think, is that people demanded some sort of information on election night.)

The official count starts Wednesday and will probably finish Sunday, although it depends on how many challenges candidates make.

So, although I suppose the odds are against AMLO, we really just have to wait a few days to see who won the election.

It's clear that regardless of who wins, they will have little legitimacy and a tough time governing, given that no party will have anywhere close to a majority in either house.

quote:

---

Originally posted by Stockholm:

hmmm....lies, rigging, cronyism, corruption - sounds a lot like the Liberal Party of Canada to me! :-)

Seriously though, PRI is just like the Liberals in that they are both these large flaccid, amorphous "natural parties of gpovernment" that coasted for generations on just identoifying themsleves so strongly with the symbols of the state that they almost brainwahsed people into regarding them as national institions without which Mexico could never be Mexico or Canada could never be Canada.

Mexico can survive quite well thank you very much without PRI and similarly the sun will still rise tomorrow without having the Liberal Party in power.

---

quote:

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The conservative candidate in Mexico's presidential election saw his lead shrink to a paper-thin 0.62 percent on Tuesday after elections officials tallied up nearly 2.6 million previously uncounted votes.

The batch of votes had been set aside because of problems with the tally sheets that poll workers used to record them, Mexico's Federal Elections Institute said late Tuesday. When they were added, Felipe Calderón of the National Action Party had 35.91 percent of the vote, and his main rival, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, had 35.29 percent, a difference of 257,532 votes.

---

These pastel-coloured politics that exclude the reality of a racially and class divided world, is not for me.

People will be shaking their heads -- "Poor Mexico, so far from God, so close to the United States." I guess the same can be said with Peru where the Conquistador Lima defeated Inca Cuzco.

[ 05 July 2006: Message edited by: ceti ]

quote:

---

At a news conference Tuesday, leaders of the PRD repeated and elaborated on Lopez Obrador's charges of irregularities in the preliminary count.

Campaign chief Ortega said results from 13,086 polling stations — slightly more 10% of the total — were not included in the initial count released by election officials.

Party leaders said results from many stations in the states of Jalisco, Sonora and Guanajuato, strongholds of Calderon's National Action Party, appeared more than once in the preliminary results.

Cesar Augusto Morones Servin, a pollster hired by the PRD, said fewer votes were counted in the presidential race than in the races for congressional deputies and senators. Mexicans were voting for all three. Blank or "null" ballots are included in the vote total, and all three categories should have had the same number of votes, Morones said.

---

This fits Palast's claim about the Floridization of Mexico's elections.

And this from subcommandante Marcos:

quote:

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SCI Marcos: “We want to share a report that the Sixth Commission received. According to the report there has been a fraud in the elections for president of the Republic. The Federal Electoral Institute (IFE), in complicity with, or better said, with the sponsorship of the president of the Republic, held back between one million and one-and-a-half million votes so that they could be added to benefit the National Action Party (PAN) candidate Felipe Calderón.

“According to this report, on (Sunday) afternoon between 5:30 and 6 p.m. Vicente Fox called (Luis Carlos) Ugalde, the IFE president, to ask him to change the entry of results of the PREP, the Preliminary Election Results Program, in such a way so that the first results entered came from the polling places that benefited Felipe Calderón and, that later they would create other votes for him. According to this report, the candidate of the Democratic Revolution Party (PRD), would have had between one million and a million-and-a-half votes more than the National Action Party. But thanks to this play the results are being changed to exactly what they want them to be. It remains to be seen what the PRD and its candidate will say about this.

“If you have any doubt, if you saw it on television yesterday, look at the message by IFE, by the president of IFE, by Mr. Ugalde. Immediately after that, in fractions of a second, came the message by Vicente Fox, already answering the first message. It’s clear that he knew beforehand what the IFE would say before the president of the Institute said it. And so according to the report we received they made an agreement to conduct this fraud and be able to impose Felipe Calderón. That is the report.

“We are not in the electoral vibe. But due to ethical and moral reasons, as Zapatistas, if we see something that is wrong, well, we have to say it, and what we are seeing is what they are doing, a fraud there up above. You are listening to Radio Insurgente, the voice of the voiceless.”

Lucas: “Well, some newspapers and magazines have announced that, not in the same way as in 1988, but in a more sophisticated manner… The president of the council, of IFE, Ugalde, said last night that there were no possibilities of saying who won… They were preparing, or are preparing, so that Fox would tell them.”

SCI Marcos: “Well, yes, this is what we are seeing. We make this announcement to whom it may concern… They are setting a trap with the PREP and the Federal Electoral Institute. He wants Felipe Calderón, additionally, to protect the backs of the presidential couple Vicente Fox and Marta Sahagún for all the corruption hey have done. You are listening to Radio Insurgente, the voice of the voiceless of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation.”

---

narconews

[ 05 July 2006: Message edited by: ceti ]

quote:

---

It's funny that Stockholm has a hate on for the Liberals, but also supports a mild form of social democracy -- at best -- in his discussions here. So too his need to vindicate parliamentary democracy, probably the most efficient method of maintaining capitalist rule,

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Stockholm:

Its just soooo inconvenient to have silly things like elections and democracy isn't it? So much simpler to have "dictatorship of the proletariat" and a one party state and prisons overflowing with political prisoners etc...

---

Like the PRI?

quote:

---

Originally posted by ceti:
People will be shaking their heads -- "Poor Mexico, so far from God, so close to the United States." I guess the same can be said with Peru where the Conquistador Lima defeated Inca Cuzco.

---

You're being ironic, right?

But in case you aren't, perhaps you could explain a couple of things:

1) AMLO cleaned up in Mexico City. Greater Mexico City occupies two of Mexico's 32 regions: the Federal District and the State of Mexico. Between them, they have a bit more than 25% of the country's population. In these two regions combined, AMLO won 50% of the vote (58% in DF), beating Calderón by 5,095,261 to 2,992,126 -- an advantage of over 2.1 million votes. If AMLO wins the election, it will be because Mexico City "defeated" the rest of the country.

Why is that OK for Mexico City and not OK for Lima?

2) That simplistic view of Perú ignores the northern coast, which is "working class", largely mestizo and proud of an indigenous heritage which predates the Inca empire. It's also the historic stronghold of Apra. The solid Apra vote in the north coast resulted in the defeat of the right-wing Lourdes Flores in the first round of the presidential election. (Flores, who has close ties to Opus Dei, came first in Lima in the first round, and was certainly the choice of the business elite.)

quote:

---

Originally posted by Stockholm:

Its just soooo inconvenient to have silly things like elections and democracy isn't it? So much simpler to have "dictatorship of the proletariat" and a one party state and prisons overflowing with political prisoners etc...

---

quote:

---

Mexico’s electoral authorities on Wednesday admitted that Andrés Manuel López Obrador, the leftwing candidate in Sunday’s hotly disputed election, could still triumph.

With 98.45 per cent of the unofficial count completed, Felipe Calderón, the centre-right candidate for the ruling National Action party (PAN), still leads his leftwing rival.

. . . .

“It is a photo finish,” a high-ranking IFE official told the FT on Wednesday.

None of this is likely to come as welcome news for Mexico’s business classes, who had initially celebrated the slim lead held by Mr Calderón at the beginning of the week.

The stock market went up almost 5 per cent following the news on Monday, and the peso saw its biggest one-day rise in six years.

---

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/d03ca4d6-0c4d-11db-86c7-0000779e2340.html

quote:

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Stocks in Mexico fell over 3% and the peso slid 1% against the U.S. dollar on Wednesday amid fears of political uncertainty and unrest as the government began recounting votes in the country's tight presidential election.

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http://tinyurl.com/gapqs

I have no idea if these votes are distributed across Mexico or if AMLO's strongholdds are getting recounted first.

This is the count. It is not a recount. (What happened before was an unverified, non-judicial preliminary count.)

The count is conducted in all 300 districts independently and simultaneously. It does not use the data collected during the preliminary count.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2006/7/5/174825/1587

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Originally posted by Hawkins:
Now this is suspense!

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Yeah. As I said up there somewhere, on election night:

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Mexico does good soap operas, too

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If that's true, it would explain the tendency.

With 71.46% counted, it's:

The difference now is 0.25% with 96.63% of precincts counted.

I believe the districts remaining are from PAN areas, that's what I have heard from the chat rooms.

[ 06 July 2006: Message edited by: hatman ]

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In an exclusive interview with The Associated Press on Wednesday, Calderon offered to include Lopez Obrador in his Cabinet an effort to build a coalition government and avoid weeks of political impasse. But he said he did not believe his rival would accept, adding that the two men had not spoken to each other since Sunday's election.

. . . .

Workers were not reviewing individual ballots except when the packages appeared tampered with or their tallies were missing, illegible or inconsistent.

Cota said Democratic Revolution would not recognize the results without a ballot-by-ballot recount. But Ugalde said that was not possible.

"Mexican law is very clear on when a ballot box can be opened: only when there are problems with the vote tallies, when the tally sheet has obviously been changed, or when the box has been tampered with," Ugalde said.

Once the count is complete, the seven-judge Federal Electoral Tribunal will hear any complaints and can overturn elections. By law, it must certify a winner by Sept. 6, and its decision is final.

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Originally posted by Michelle:
I saw a picture in the paper (over someone's shoulder on the subway, so I'm not sure which paper it was) of a protester holding up a ballot sheet that he found in the street with Lopez Obrador marked on it. Not sure if that proves anything or not, but it was effective.

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Rigged!

Hell, the only political party in Canadian history that has used truly PRIista tactics (at least openly, anyways) is Maurice Duplessis' ironically clerical Union Nationale. (Okay, so Duplessis used whiskey and houehold appliances instead of pesos to win votes...lol)

Oh...And the correct expression for dicussing vote fraud in Mexican politics is not "rigged"...It's "Se cayo el sistema", in honour of the bizarre computer "shutdown" that allowed the PRI's Salinas to steal the 1988 election from future PRD founder Cardenas.

[ 06 July 2006: Message edited by: Heavy Sharper ]

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Originally posted by Heavy Sharper:
Hell, the only political party in Canadian history that has used truly PRIista tactics (at least openly, anyways) is Maurice Duplessis' ironically clerical Union Nationale.

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"Ironically clerical?" I would say that the role of the church in maintaining Duplessis was deplorable.

Other provincial governments which might fall into the category, although none with the level of corruption which marked PRI's decades of power, would be the Socreds in BC and Alberta, and Joey Smallwood's reign over Newfoundland. The latter is probably the closest parallel, although it's still quite distant.

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And the correct expression for dicussing vote fraud in Mexican politics is not "rigged"...It's "Se cayo el sistema", in honour of the bizarre computer "shutdown" that allowed the PRI's Salinas to steal the 1988 election from future PRD founder Cardenas.

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I don't think there is any comparison between that incident and what happened this week.

I'm certainly not prepared to say that IFE's results are free of doubt, but I don't see any evidence that they could be off by even one per cent.

The problem with the Mexican election happened before the votes were cast. It was the campaign of lies and fears promoted by the mass media, by the business elite, and by the Fox government. But that does not mean that the vote counting was inaccurate.

No matter how many times you count a ballot, you're not going to change the fact that it was marked based on a campaign of lies. It is important to separate the two issues.

ETA: On election night, AMLO announced that his party's computations showed them winning by "less than 500,000 votes" (that is, less than one per cent), but he hasn't actually produced any proof of that allegation. There are scattered incidents, as there are in any election, and the electoral tribunal has yet to rule on these. Even assuming that all of the incidents were against the PRD, they cannot have had much influence on the vote count.

Unfortunately, in an election where the final margin of victory is around half a percent, even minor issues with vote counting become important. But leaving that aside, one has to ask: Would AMLO with 36% of the vote be a more legitimate president than Calderón with 36% of the vote?

[ 06 July 2006: Message edited by: rici ]

Really, I think PRI has very few similarities to any Canadian Party. If one recalls that its roots are absolutely revolutionary (its title is Party of The Institutionalized Revolution) it is hard to make an analogy with DuPlessis.

If you go back a ways in PRI history, you will find that the first Cardenas administration nationalized Mexico's oil reserve at a time when they were owned by US interests. They didn't pay compensation, either.

Last night, Elba Esther Gordillo (a prominent anti-Madrazo priista) gave an interview in which she said that after Madrazo's disastrous campaign, PRI will have to "change everything, maybe even its name". My first thought was, yep, it's now the Non-institutionalized Revolutionary Party (PRNI). Mind you, it's not that revolutionary any more, either. Perhaps it should just be PNI.

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Votes from Mexico's arid north, home to tough ranchers and hard-working entrepreneurs, were crucial in conservative Felipe Calderon's photo-finish presidential election victory on Thursday.

Calderon won almost 2 1/2 times more votes in 11 northern and western states than his leftist rival Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, whose Party of the Democratic Revolution, or PRD, has long been mistrusted by the influential business community based near the U.S. border.

. . . .

The north's cactus-strewn deserts fit the stereotype foreigners have of Mexico, but its people and politics are different from the more populous and lush south, where ancient Aztec and Maya civilizations shaped the nation's character.

The relatively prosperous north has an entrepreneurial spirit that is more akin to a Texas lifestyle.

. . . .

"The north is where a good part of the country's wealth is based. It is industrial Mexico, which are factors close to the ideology and platform of the PAN," said Miguel Reyes, political analyst at the University of Monterrey

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During his nearly six years in office, outgoing president Vicente Fox has often used his attorney general's office against leftist front-runner Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador to counter his growing popularity, including a failed effort to bar the former Mexico City mayor from the ballot and even imprison him.

Now, in a desperate last-minute electoral ploy by Fox's right-wing National Action or PAN party to boost the fortunes of its lagging candidate Felipe Calderon, the agents tried to pressure Ponce into testifying that AMLO and his PRD party had used city revenues to finance his presidential campaign but Ponce proved a stand-up guy and ultimately rebuffed the government men.

The imprisoned finance secretary's refusal to talk greatly disappointed both Televisa and TV Azteca, Mexico's two-headed television monopoly that has waged an unrelenting dirty war against Lopez Obrador for months and even years. Indeed, TV crews were stationed out in the La Palma parking lot to record Ponce's thwarted confession for primetime news and both networks had reserved time blocks on their evening broadcasting, forcing the anchors to scramble to fill in the gap

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Originally posted by rici:
The problem with the Mexican election happened before the votes were cast.

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There is evidence that left-leaning voters have been scrubbed from key electoral lists in Latin America.

Just before the 2000 balloting in Florida, I reported in the Guardian that its governor, Jeb Bush, had ordered the removal of tens of thousands of black citizens from the state's voter rolls. He called them "felons", but our investigation discovered their only crime was Voting While Black. And that little scrub of the voter rolls gave the White House to his brother George.

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.

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?

There's more that the Mexico vote has in common with Florida besides the heat. The ruling party's hand-picked electoral commission counted a mere 402,000 votes more for their candidate, Felipe Calderón, over challenger Andrés Manuel López Obrador. That's noteworthy in light of the surprise showing of candidate Señor Blank-o (the 827,000 ballots supposedly left "blank").

Blank ballots are rarely random. In Florida in 2000, 88% of the supposedly blank ballots came from African-American voting districts - that is, they were cast by Democratic voters. In Mexico, the supposed empty or unreadable ballots come from the poorer districts where the challenger's Party of the Democratic Revolution (PDR) is strongest.

There's an echo of the US non-count in the south-of-the-border tally. It's called "negative drop-off". In a surprising number of districts in Mexico, the federal electoral commission logged lots of negative drop-off: more votes for lower offices than for president. Did López Obrador supporters, en masse, forget to punch in their choice?

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While the announced winner of last Sunday's presidential election, Felipe Calderón, kept a low profile on Saturday, his leftist rival led a rally of at least 150,000 people, charged the polling had been marred by fraud and suggested there would be civil unrest without a vote-by-vote recount.

. . . .

"We are aware we are confronting a powerful group, economically and politically, that are accustomed to winning at all costs, without moral scruples," he told the crowd. He maintained that this group had "conspired against democracy" and that "they are the ones who now want to put a servant in the presidency."

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Whoops, didn't notice that this was the 100th post. I'm going to close this, but please feel free to start a new thread.

[ 09 July 2006: Message edited by: Michelle ]