Obrador vows to continue fighting
By Winter Patriot on 8/28/2006, 10:13pm PT  

Guest blogged by Winter Patriot

We have two news articles and some analysis from Mexico:

BBC: Mexico court rejects fraud claim

Mexico's top electoral court has rejected claims July's presidential election was riddled with fraud.

The court decided not to order a full recount of votes from the disputed election, as demanded by leftist candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador.

Mr Lopez Obrador, who claims his narrow election defeat was rigged, has vowed to continue fighting the result.


There's more from the BBC here.

NYT: Mexican Court Rejects Voting Fraud Charges

MEXICO CITY, Aug. 28 — Felipe Calderón seemed virtually assured of being designated president of Mexico next week after the country’s highest electoral tribunal on Monday threw out legal challenges from his leftist opponent, who claims that widespread fraud warped the results of last month’s national election.

The seven-member tribunal stopped short of officially designating Mr. Calderón, a conservative, president-elect. But it ruled unanimously that the opponent, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, had failed to prove that irregularities in many polling places stemmed from fraud, nor had he proven that the errors affected him more than his opponent.

The judges said in open court on Monday that they had ordered the votes from scores of polling places annulled for irregularities found in a partial recount, but that the final result would not change. They also made it clear they found no evidence of fraud.

There's more from the New York Times here.

Toronto Star: Navigating the politics of populist upheaval

This piece, by Arno Kopecky, is relatively long, and full of the kind of detail that never quite makes it into the BBC or NYT reports. It was written before today's announcement, but it's still valuable, in my nearly frozen opinion.

It starts like this:

Mexico today, like much of Latin America, is caught between parallel realities. The country is trying to decide whether the populist in their midst is a saviour or just a sore loser.

Is Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, runner-up by 0.6 per cent of the vote in last month's presidential election, the noble victim of electoral fraud? Or is he no more than a nice-seeming thug with a credulous legion of peasants at his back?

It depends on which paper you read.

And it ends like this:

History demonstrates that revolutions tend to turn the oppressed into tyrants. Whoever comes out on top in the struggles now taking place in Mexico, they will need to be watched.

But in what democracy is this not true? Watchfulness is the mechanism by which democracies keep themselves healthy.

And if you want to know what's in the middle, click here.

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Article Categories: Mexico