López Obrador contests elections
in Mexico

MEXICO, July 10.—The challenge to the presidential elections of July 2 in Mexico has now been placed in a legal framework after the For the Good of All coalition opposition formally filed its disagreement before a judge on Sunday.

The suit was filed last night in the No 15 District Council of this capital and seeks an order by the Federation Judicial Power Electoral Court (TEPJF) for a recount of the votes cast one week ago by more than 40 million Mexicans, PL notes.

According to the Democratic Revolution (PRD), Workers (PT) and Convergence Parties that make up the alliance, the Federal Electoral Institute (IFE) manipulated the election results and incurred the crime of usurpation of function.

Moreover, there is evidence that at least 50,000 ballot slips from more than 130,000 installed polling stations have visible signs of alteration and inconsistencies.

The claim coincided with various media reports on a fifth attack on the internet website of Manual López Obrador, the For the Good of All presidential candidate.

The interference occurred on Saturday night a few hours after a mass protest in which the former capital head of government outlined a national plan of struggle against the electoral fraud.

The attack came when the website was beginning to put out recorded telephone calls that confirm maneuvers on behalf of the government candidate Felipe Calderón.

They are calls made by Elba Esther Gordillo, leader of the National Teachers Union and Pedro Cerisola, secretary of Communications, to the governor of the northern state of Tamaulipas, Eugenio Hernández.

The abovementioned dialogues are part of the legal challenge.

However, the IFE yesterday persisted in denying any alleged political manipulation of the Preliminary Results Program (PREP).

According to René Miranda, coordinator of the IFE Information Services, if Calderón remained all the time above the PREP figures, that was due to the way in which the results of the ballots counted and computed were captured.