Mexican Election

[TAE]

Poll protests block Mexico City

 

[Kid_Eternity]

Wow! Here's hoping they get the re-count.

 

[JoePolitix]

If the left can come to power off the back of mass protests that would definately bode well for the advancement of socialism in Mexico.

 

[DrRingDing]

If the left can come to power off the back of mass protests that would definately bode well for the advancement of socialism in Mexico.

What do you think the chances are that they will?

 

[lostexpectation]

zilch

 

[ska invita]

There not done yet - Mexican protesters take over capital

Published: 01 August 2006

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/article1207597.ece

"The Federal Electoral Tribunal has until 6 September to declare a result or annul the election."

That will be the big riot day - if there's going to be one.

 

[poster342002]

Funny how the western media aren't calling this "the Mexican [insert colour] revolution", eh?

 

[ska invita]

I guess cos they havent had a revolution yet!

Did you hear how chavez, morales, et al have been called "the pink wave"?

Dont let it catch on...

 

[poster342002]

I guess cos they havent had a revolution yet!

It gets called a revolution way before it gets this far when it happens in a former-soviet republic. IE; when it happens in a country that will then rush headlong to "embrace" free-market economics and US foreign-policy afterwards.

 

[lostexpectation]

There not done yet - Mexican protesters take over capital

Published: 01 August 2006

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/article1207597.ece

"The Federal Electoral Tribunal has until 6 September to declare a result or annul the election."

That will be the big riot day - if there's going to be one.

they are going to stay there for over a month and wait for establishment tribunal to say ya or nay?

 

[ska invita]

Nah - they'll come and go, but that will be the crunch day.

If that decision goes aginst them then they'll bound to riot or somthing.

 

[ska invita]

I was wrong - it looks they are literally setting up camp until the 6th August:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,,1835602,00.html

Mexico's charismatic leftist leader, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, has turned a large slice of central Mexico City into a permanent protest camp as part of his attempt to force a recount of last month's presidential election.

The occupation of the capital's great Zócalo Plaza and some six miles of the central Reforma Avenue follows a series of marches that culminated in the biggest demonstration in modern Mexican history on Sunday. Estimates of the number of participants ranged from 350,000 to more than 2 million.

 

[poster342002]

Scenes like this in the Ukraine got the fawning adulation of the western media. It got given the label "The Orange Revolution". Wonder why that same western media isn't giving this event similar treatment...

 

[JoePolitix]

I was wrong - it looks they are literally setting up camp until the 6th August:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,,1835602,00.html

It's increasingly looking like the political stakes will be too high for Mexico's ruling class to allow the right to stay in power. The social democrats will come to office in exchange for social peace, just like in Bolivia.

 

[Donna Ferentes]

Scenes like this in the Ukraine got the fawning adulation of the western media. It got given the label "The Orange Revolution". Wonder why that same western media isn't giving this event similar treatment...

It's a more than valid point.

More coverage here, mind you, but then again it's a Spanish-speaking country.

 

[poster342002]

It's a more than valid point.

As I kind-of said earlier, these sort of events only get sycophantic western media coverage when it happens in a country that will then rush headlong to "embrace" free-market economics and US foreign-policy afterwards.

 

[Crispy]

The 'orange revolution' got plenty of press because it was an eastern european transfer of power that didn't involve violence or asassination (plus there were all the juicy poisoning plot stories etc) Mexico is 1000s more miles away and doesn't really appear on anyone's radar. I would say that the American media would be covering it differently, but they've got their own agenda too.

 

[Donna Ferentes]

I'd guess that Ukraine looms no larger in the minds of people in England than does Mexico.

 

[poster342002]

I'd guess that Ukraine looms no larger in the minds of people in England than does Mexico.

Yet compare the different media coverage and tone. The media wets it's pants in excitement when yet another "people power" revolution looks set to install yet another free-marketeering regime somewhere. When a people-power revolution appears like this one in mexico, the readtion is far more muted.

 

[Crispy]

Oh I don't know -

eastern europe: dirty migrants, fall of communism, enlarge the EU

mexico: erm, fajitas?

 

[ska invita]

I would say that the American media would be covering it differently, but they've got their own agenda too.

check CNN for example - they're going with 1 dead Israeli soldier for their front page:

Israeli troops carry the coffin of a soldier killed fighting Hezbollah.

"Israel pushed deeper into Lebanon today and Hezbollah responded by firing a rocket farther south than ever -- in a wave of launches that killed one Israeli and wounded seven others."

http://www.cnn.com/

only one person died today? biased?

if you search for the mexico story it is reported like this:
http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/americas/08/02/mexico.election.ap/index.html

President Vicente Fox called on Mexico City authorities Wednesday to clear streets of protest camps that have crippled the capital's center as part of leftist candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador's battle in the disputed presidential race.

[...]

"They want to win in the streets something they weren't able to win at the voting booth," he told reporters Tuesday.

Mexican stocks fell for a second straight day Tuesday, with the key IPC index closing 0.6 percent lower. The peso also weakened slightly -- which analysts blamed in part on the street blockades.

..ie., clearly in a negative light.

ultimately it hasnt made the front internet pages of the nytimes, the washington post, or the la times

-I wonder mexican americans make of it? (often immigrants become ultra-conservative, in an attempt to "fit in".)

 

[chilango]

i´ll be back in mexico within a few days, i´ll let you all know the latest from "the streets". as it were.

 

[lostexpectation]

well what has the upshot of the ukraine revolution the pro-russian guy is back as PM, did the NED get their monies worth anyway?

the tribunal has said not to full recount has allowed a partial recount

, the judges ordered that the votes in the July 2 election be recounted in only 11,839 of the 130,000 polling places

http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/10A586B1-C09A-407A-BEAF-B4247B697FAE.htm

http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/08/06/news/mexico.php

"The election method is ingenious," Magistrate Mauro Miguel Reyes Zapata said. "It's ingenious, and we can assume it is secure, because it is the citizens who carry it out and organize it."

so hmm widespread fraud or the whole voting thing is a crock, either way

 

[phildwyer]

It was reported yesterday that Obrador supporters had occupied the tollbooths on the roads into DF, in addition to the disruption they've been causing around the Zocalo for weeks. They've attempted to occupy the stock exchange and government buildings. Sounds like the authorities are beginning to get seriously pissed off at damage to the economy, which is estimated to run at $23 million per day. I still can't see a revolution building though, unless the govt do something really daft, like a massacre...

 

[Barking_Mad]

Some info on the vote rigging.

Mexico’s Partial Vote Recount Confirms Massive and Systematic Election Fraud
August 14, 2006

Finally, the hard numbers are starting to come in. In the “partial recount” of paper ballots from the July 2 presidential election in Mexico, ordered by the Supreme Electoral Tribunal (known as the Trife), the recount has been completed in 10,679 precincts of the 11,839 ordered by the court (about 9 percent of Mexico’s 130,000 precincts). From these precincts, Narco News has obtained the following preliminary numbers that confirm the massive and systematic electoral fraud inflicted on the Mexican people:

* In 3,074 precincts (29 percent of those recounted), 45,890 illegal votes, above the number of voters who cast ballots in each polling place, were found stuffed inside the ballot boxes (an average of 15 for each of these precincts, primarily in strongholds of the National Action Party, known as the PAN, of President Vicente Fox and his candidate, Felipe Calderón).
* In 4,368 precincts (41 percent of those recounted), 80,392 ballots of citizens who did vote are missing (an average of 18 votes in each of these precincts).
* Together, these 7,442 precincts contain about 70 percent of the ballots recounted. The total amount of ballots either stolen or forged adds up to 126,282 votes altered.
* If the recount results of these 10,679 precincts (8.2 percent of the nation’s 130,000 polling places) are projected nationwide, it would mean that more than 1.5 million votes were either stolen or stuffed in an election that the first official count claimed was won by Calderon by only 243,000 votes.
* Among the findings of this very limited partial recount are that in 3,079 precincts where the PAN party is strong and where, in many cases, the Democratic Revolution Party (PRD) of candidate Andrés Manuel López Obrador did not count with election night poll watchers, one or more of three things occurred: Either the Federal Electoral Institute (IFE, in its Spanish initials) illegally provided more ballots than there are voters in those precincts, or the PAN party stole those extra ballots, or ballots were forged.

“Taqueo and Saqueo”

These preliminary recounts demonstrate mainly two kinds of fraud: “taqueo,” or the stuffing of ballot boxes with false votes as if putting extra beans inside a taco, and “saqueo,” or “looting,” that is, the disappearance of legitimate ballots cast.

A significant problem, now, for Mexican democracy (for those who claim that the election was fair, and also for those who view this evidence as proof of electoral fraud) is that there is no way to tell, inside each ballot box, which of the ballots were legal and which were not; nor which ballots were stolen and which were not.

In some past post-electoral disputes for state and local offices, the Trife electoral court has opted, based on this kind of evidence, to annul the results from those precincts where stuffing or looting occurred.

If the Trife follows the law and its own established precedents, and annuls the results in these 7,442 precincts where the fraud took place, it would reverse the official results and López Obrador would emerge the victor by more than 425,000 votes nationwide.

Specifically, Calderón would lose 1,225,326 votes from his tally, while López Obrador would lose just 556,600; a difference of 668,726. When factoring in IFE’s claim that Calderón has a more than 243,000 vote advantage, López Obrador would still win the election by those 425,000 votes plus some.

In other words, if the Supreme Electoral Court determines that only half of the problematic precincts are to be annulled, López Obrador would still be declared the presidential victor. To continue to impose Calderón, at this point, would require the court’s endorsement of results from at least 4,000 precincts that the recount has demonstrated were scenes of the electoral crimes of ballot-stuffing and ballot-theft. By failing to annul those precincts, the court would, in effect, annul the legitimacy of the Mexican State, lighting the fuse on a social conflict much larger than anything that has yet occurred in the wake of the fraudulent election.

 

[lostexpectation]

i don't think this is going to go anywhere... maybe an annullment if we're lucky...

they've riotswept the protestors from their camp outside the government buildings as there is supposed to a state of the nation address in next week... which could be sign that vote was defrauded or could be just run of the mill riot squad action... so standard manilpulation of wholesale fraud...

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=364x1942435
for the pics, not the discussion

there this obrador bribe thing..

Tape revives Mexican conspiracy theory

MEXICO CITY — Claims by Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador that a powerful cabal of politicians and the mega-wealthy have conspired to rob him of this summer's presidential election have long been dismissed by his critics as paranoia.

But the interrogation of a real estate developer, taped two years ago in Cuba and broadcast here Friday on a radio program, might well confirm the notion that just because a man could be paranoid doesn't mean people aren't out to get him.

On the tape, jailed businessman Carlos Ahumada alleges that several Mexican Cabinet ministers, a powerful senator from President Vicente Fox's party and former President Carlos Salinas de Gortari engineered the February 2004 release of other videotapes showing the developer bribing senior aides to Lopez Obrador.

"It's the fight for 2006, that's what they won," Carlos Ahumada, a native of Argentina who had been active in Mexico City construction, says on the tape. "I mean, they practically pulled Andres Manuel out of the presidential race."


http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/world/4127685.html

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2006/8/19/115430/214 -pics

so obradors star was waning, then this surfaces...

 

[phildwyer]

i don't think this is going to go anywhere...

I never thought it was. Basically people don't think Obrador as President would make that much difference to their lives that its worth dying for. They're probably right, tbh.

 

[phildwyer]

Then again, I just heard a piece on the world service where they were interviewing people in the tent city at the Zocalo, they reckoned they'd be there for six years if that's what it takes. I gather there hasn't been much coverage of the Mexican crisis in Europe, unlike the very similar situation in Ukraine 2004. Hmm I wonder why that might be...

 

[Crispy]

The geographical distance
The lack of connections with other current stories (EU enlargement etc)
The fact that western business and governments aren't funding this one

 

[phildwyer]

The geographical distance
The lack of connections with other current stories (EU enlargement etc)
The fact that western business and governments aren't funding this one

The fact that its a Leftist who's been robbed. Trouble is, Obrador is now facing the perennial problem of "moderate" socialists, which is that people don't believe they'll make enough of a difference to be worth actually fighting for. Since their brand of socialism is largely defined by eschewing violence, they have no recourse when violence is used against them. People would fight for Chavez or Castro because they obviously do make a radical difference in people's lives, but they won't fight for Obrador.