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López Obrador fights back
BY NIDIA DIAZ—Granma
International staff writer—
TWO
weeks have passed since the overwhelming majority of
the 41 million Mexicans entitled to vote decided to
go to the polling booths to elect the new president
of Mexico in a contest in which there were two
options: either to vote for the continuance of a
neoliberal model that privileges a minority plus
everything in that country that has represented
genuflection before the empire; or, on the basis of
a program for social justice and national dignity,
to attempt to construct a society in which there is
space for everyone.
Both
ways were known. Both have been tested.
The
first, represented by Felipe Calderón, from the
government National Action Party (PAN), is one of
lost illusions, the betrayal of an electorate that
six years earlier voted for change after almost 70
years of Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI)
governments that not only failed to keep their
promises of more employment, better opportunities
and a solution to the emigration issue, but – in the
case of the latter – yielded to Washington and
virtually applauded the criminalization of
immigrants and the militarization of the shared
border.
Meanwhile, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, governor of
the important Federal District and candidate for the
For the Good of All coalition, comprising the
Democratic Revolution Party (PRD), the Workers Party
(PT) and the Convergence entered the ring with the
guarantee of having honestly administered state
assets to the benefit of the majority of the heavily
populated capital, where social contrasts are
dramatic.
It
was nothing strange then, that in the pre-electoral
battle the forces of the political ultra-right, of
the representatives of the interests of the national
oligarchy, the transnationals and the Republic
administration of George W. Bush which has acted
behind the scenes, would come together to tighten
the strings against the PRD candidate in a shameless
dirty deal with the powerful media.
From
the outset López Obrador would be the incarnation of
“a danger to Mexico,” a Hugo Chávez satellite,
responsible for the country heading for chaos in the
case of bearing off the victory; all without
counting the unfruitful maneuvers of the executive
itself to deprive him of his candidacy.
Those antecedents, while known, are worth recalling
at a point at which, according to the Alliance For
the Good of All campaign command, López Obrador
himself, important political and social sectors and
the independent press are all saying that the
governing PAN – with the approval of President
Vicente Fox – has plotted an electoral fraud, a
“technical coup d’état” which, to the discredit of
Mexican democracy, could be consummated against the
PRD candidate without the accused having being able
to demonstrate the contrary.
On
Saturday, July 8, addressing more than 200,000
Mexicans in the capital’s main plaza, and in various
press conferences on that issue, Andrés Manuel López
Obrador called for a national march in protest at
what, for the first time since Election Day, he has
described as a fraud. A peaceful march that should
happen again this Sunday.
A
“vote by vote and polling booth by polling booth”
recount was the demand made by the For the Good of
All coalition starting Monday July 3 to the Judicial
Power Electoral Court (TEPJ), a body that according
to federal law has the responsibility of resolving
the charges of “irregularities” committed by the
Federal Electoral Institute (IFE), which is charged
of having maintained shady or at very least
irresponsible actions before, during and after the
elections to the constant benefit of the government
candidate.
National analysts have noted that after the polls
closed and when the count unexpectedly and
suspiciously changed direction to favor Calderón,
the IFE left speculations as to the winner in the
hands of the media for more than three hours. It was
only then that IFE President Luis Carlos Ugalde
announced the impossibility of giving the result
given a possible technical tie and immediately
President Fox himself spoke to the nation along the
same lines. To that moment the CNN, Televisa and
Mexican television – to quote a few examples – had
quashed the idea that the PAN was irreversibly
ahead.
A
La Jornada editorial considers “that all the
doubts and irregularities exposed in the last few
days when the trend in favor of López Obrador was
surprisingly reversed by less than one percentage
point in favor of Felipe Calderón, should be
dispatched before the process ends with a formal
announcement of a winner. In any other way,” it
adds, “a government will be constituted on the basis
of enormous discredit and a national split.”
In
the midst of so much confusion and a seeming
treachery on the part of the PAN, and without the
TEPJ having declared him the winner, Felipe Calderón
has proposed a co-government to his adversary. It
has not passed unnoticed that if to date López
Obrador was “a danger” for Mexico, how can it be
that he is now being invited to participate in the
cabinet of the new six-year term.
In
relation to that, it is likewise notable that the
United States, Spain and Canada have congratulated
the supposed winner, government candidate Felipe
Calderón and the European Union is taking of
“impeccable” elections in which “democracy” won.
Meanwhile, the exposés of fraud are more than a few
and López Obrador has enumerated them in recent
public addresses:
--The existence of a state operation to favor Felipe
Calderón.
--The existence of an order not to open electoral
packets and an abnormal hurry to resolve a
numerically hard-fought election in less than 24
hours.
--Irregularities at 55,000 polling booths.
--The disappearance of more than three million
votes, two million of which the electoral
authorities admitted were discounted as “illegible”
after the accusation. Of these votes 600,000
inexplicably “disappeared” in the states in which
the PRD candidate won.
The
TEPJ, the only instance that can do so, has until
August 31 to resolve the appeal of López Obrador and
his lawyers and until September 6 to definitively
announce the new Mexican president.
Until then the country will be in suspense. The
dangers could be varied taking into account that the
right and the forces supporting the PAN have a lot
to lose. Provocations could tempt more than a few.
However, beyond the 0.58% difference that separates
Felipe Calderón from Andrés Manuel López Obrador in
the count of the July 2 elections, it is a fact that
the Mexican left, represented by the For the Good of
All coalition, has irreversibly become one of the
country’s most powerful political forces, displacing
the PRI and, even though they were robbed of a win
in the case of the 1998 elections, it will be
impossible to detain the will of an overwhelming
majority of the electorate that is convinced that
another Mexico is possible.
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