Remember That Mexican Election Thingie?

Well, it still isn't settled - and it looks like Andrés Manuel López Obrador(AMLO) is still trying to upset Mexico and declare himself the winner - election results be damned.

MEXICO CITY — To illustrate the "ad terrorem" method by which truth was imposed in totalitarian societies, Polish philosopher Leszek Kolakowski told a story: Two girls race each other in a park, the one who is behind repeatedly proclaiming at the top of her lungs, "I'm winning! I'm winning!," until the one in the lead gives up and runs crying to her mother, saying: "I can't beat her, she always wins."

Minus the ending, something similar is happening in Mexico. After a model Election Day (free, orderly, peaceful) during which 41,791,322 Mexicans voted, their votes tabulated in 130,477 polling places by 909,575 citizens, the PRD (Democratic Revolutionary Party) candidate for president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, lost by a margin of 0.57 percentage point to Felipe Calderón, candidate of the National Action Party (PAN).

A preliminary electronic tally sponsored by the Universidad Nacional Autónoma of México matched the final count taken in the 300 electoral districts where the official results from the polling places were collected. That negative outcome in the presidential vote aside, on the very same Election Day, the PRD became the second most powerful force in the legislature, considerably increasing its presence in both chambers, while its candidate for head of government for the Mexico City district won with 47 percent of the vote and the PRD swept nearly all the executive and legislative positions in the city.

This was the reality testified to by 1,800 district advisers, 970,000 representatives from all the parties, 24,769 national observers and 639 international observers. Nevertheless, López Obrador is unwilling to accept his personal defeat (although, of course, he considers the elections that produced unprecedented victories for his party to be valid).

Given the narrow margin of the presidential election, the PRD chose to exercise its legitimate right to challenge the results before the Federal Election Tribunal. The court's final and unappealable ruling will decide no later than Sept. 6 whether the irregularities claimed by the PRD are valid, in which polling places they occurred, whether a recount should take place and, ultimately, the result of the presidential election.

If the PRD candidate had simply implemented this legal strategy, his behavior would not have unforgivably sullied the process or undermined Mexico's fragile democracy. But as might have been predicted, López Obrador wasn't satisfied with legal action. Just as he's always done, he had to go for broke — resorting to "ad terrorem" methods.

AMLO is declaring himself the winner and is continuing his campaign of saying he was cheated even though the election results showed his party as gaining seats. This is a really bad, bad sign. He's been listening to former Gore staffers.

Aware from the night of July 2 that the outlook wasn't good, López Obrador behaved like the girl in the story above. He went to the Zócalo (that theological-political spot in the historical center of Mexico City) to declare: "We've won the presidency." Days later, after release of the official tally by the Federal Electoral Institute (the independent citizen body that since 1996 has been successfully organizing fair elections at every federal level, reversing a long history of fraud), López Obrador summoned the "people" to an "assembly" at which he called President Vicente Fox a "traitor to democracy" and used the most ominous word in the Mexican political dictionary: "fraud."

This denigration of the respected Mexican electoral system (which had just announced the triumph of hundreds of PRD candidates), and the incendiary speeches that have followed seriously threaten the peace in Mexico.

Besides proclaiming his own victory, insulting the president, personally threatening Calderón and his family, calling the officials of the Federal Electoral Institute "criminals," and anticipating the verdict of the judiciary's Federal Electoral Tribunal, López Obrador has employed tactics worthy of an Orwell novel. Arithmetical irregularities that are isolated, that are only presumed and not confirmed by the tribunal, are presented to the public as clear proof that the whole process was tainted. And if, as occurred on July 11, his own polling-place representatives deny a purported irregularity, López Obrador argues that they were "bought" or corrupted.

Most troubling of all is that López Obrador has called for demonstrations all over the country "in support of democracy" — the same democracy whose institutions he has impugned. Even though he insists that the marches will be "peaceful" and "won't get out of hand," he knows very well that in the atmosphere he has created, violent actions might be initiated by either side. It isn't hard to gauge his intentions. He's made them very plain, and since he's a man of his word, he must be believed: "I'll go as far as the people want me to go."

This is a coup attempt, plain and simple. The evidence does not point to AMLO having won given that his party did even if he did not. This could get ugly.

• 

  By Tony, Thursday, 27 July , 2006 @ 9:18 am

  Yeah right, there goes Enrique Kraus, apologist for the Mexican elite, doing somersaults to justify not recounting every vote in the closest-ever election in a country with a long and sad history of electoral fraud. Just trust us, say the electoral officials appointed by the same party whose candidate they declare has “won.” Trust us, despite all the reports of uncounted ballots, discarded ballots found in dumps, major discrepancies with exit polls — and Mexico’s long history of stolen elections.
  If Calderon won, as Kraus so adamantly insists, why is he so afraid of a ballot-by-ballot recount? That is all Lopez Obrador is asking for.
  Given all the evidence presented and Mexico’s long history of electoral fraud, no fair-minded Mexican should object to this demand.
  If Mexico is truly a democracy, what’s wrong with doing a hand count of all the ballots?
  As things stand, Calderon and his apologists are acting as though they have something to hide.

• 

  By Gaius, Thursday, 27 July , 2006 @ 9:21 am

  Observers have said the election was clean.

Other Links to this Post

1. The Bullwinkle Blog » Blog Archive » Is There An Echo In Here? — Thursday, 27 July , 2006 @ 2:55 am

2. The Seven Realms — Thursday, 27 July , 2006 @ 7:55 pm