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.