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| Caribbean-Latin America |
| Mexican Left seething over vote count |
| 2006-07-04 |
| MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Mexico's left, still smarting from a 1988 presidential vote it says was stolen from it, Conservative candidate Felipe Calderon claimed victory in Sunday's hard-fought presidential election and official returns appeared to show anti-poverty campaigner Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador would be unable to catch him. Harvard-educated Calderon held a one-point lead over former Indian welfare officer Lopez Obrador on Monday with returns in from almost 98 percent of polling stations. A top electoral official said a recount this week was unlikely to change that. Leaders of the leftist Party of the Democratic Revolution, or PRD, were to meet Lopez Obrador to try to rescue his attempt to become president and join the ranks of leftist leaders in Latin America. A tiny group of defiant Lopez Obrador supporters gathered outside his campaign headquarters. Many said their candidate, the former mayor of Mexico City, had been cheated of victory by fraud. "He won more points that Calderon," said retired factory worker Arturo Jimenez, 74. "He lost, but unfairly. There was sleight of hand involved," said office cleaner Carmen Sanchez. No candidate has claimed to have evidence of vote-rigging in the election, which the Federal Electoral Institute said was too close to call yet. Mexico City was quiet on Monday, except for a small student protest outside the electoral authority's office. |
| Posted by:Steve White |
| #10 "Mexican Left seething over vote count" What, they're Who knew? ;-p |
| Posted by: Barbara Skolaut 2006-07-04 15:33 |
| #9 Leave it with the Florida Supreme Court. No nead for SCOTUS to get involved. Hail Gaia! |
| Posted by: AlGore 2006-07-04 13:51 |
| #8 JBU Yes, I know. Comment started as one on fraud but evolved into one on potential effects of third parties. The statement that both Calderon & Obrador can claim they wuz robbed stands; the question is where does that lead. |
| Posted by: Glenmore 2006-07-04 12:50 |
| #7 Uh, Glenmore: this was a three-party race. |
| Posted by: JSU 2006-07-04 12:09 |
| #6 Damn, an original thought, I like it, maybe that "Border Patrol" agent who's vanished is one of the lead men to advance this.(Wishful thinking) |
| Posted by: Redneck Jim 2006-07-04 11:36 |
| #5 Since the Mexican government has no interest in sealing the border, how about all those millions of AK-47 and ammo taken in Iraq. Wouldn't be nice to run guns the other direction? 8 million illegal workers and family here, so how about 8 million AK-47s to Mexico? It's a feature, not a bug. |
| Posted by: Slomoper Jolumble7671 2006-07-04 09:13 |
| #4 As long as candidates are willing to say what skilled pollsters tell them the people want to hear, elections will be 'close'. As long as they are close, there will be claims of fraud. And those claims will probably be true (of both sides). But because the elections are so close that small bits of fraud 'matter', the fraud doesn't really matter, because the campaigns have found the 'middle', where the candidates positions are about the same anyway - in a two party race. Once you have a major third party though, the leaders may not be campaigning for the middle voters, but for the extremes, and you get a much more volatile system (maybe even revolution or civil war.) |
| Posted by: Glenmore 2006-07-04 06:59 |
| #3 Fred's Predictable Meter seems to be working just fine. |
| Posted by: Seafarious 2006-07-04 01:03 |
| #2 Conservatives just make a thin majority in North America it seems. |
| Posted by: Sock Puppet of Doom 2006-07-04 00:59 |
| #1 Ever notice that you never see Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador and Albert Arnold Gore, Jr. in the same place at the same time? |
| Posted by: Mike 2006-07-04 00:35 |