ot -- Mexico leftist challenges vote result
Thu Jul 6, 2006 12:00 PM ET
today.reuters.com
MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Mexico's leftist presidential candidate refused on Thursday to accept election results that showed him losing narrowly to a conservative and launched a legal challenge to change them.
Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, the leftist former mayor of Mexico City, was trailing ruling party candidate Felipe Calderon by a fraction of a percentage point in a recount from Sunday's disputed election.
Lopez Obrador said the vote counts were blighted by irregularities and called a rally of supporters for Saturday in the capital's main Zocalo square to back his cause.
"We cannot recognize or accept these results. There are lots of irregularities," he told a news conference.
He said he would take his complaints to Mexico's highest electoral court, which means disputes over who won the election could drag on until early September.
The call for a rally in the Zocalo square, which can hold over 100,00 people, raised fears of rowdy street protests and further turmoil, added to the weeks of legal wrangling like that which followed the U.S. election in 2000.
Lopez Obrador would ask the court for a new count of every single vote, not just tally sheets which is the normal Mexican way of recounting votes, said his election campaign chief, Jesus Ortega.
After Lopez Obrador lodges a complaint in the coming days, the Federal Electoral Tribunal must declare an election winner by September 6 at the latest. The court's ruling is definitive.
GOSSAMER-THIN LEAD
Preliminary results showed Calderon, a former energy minister, ahead of the leftist by 0.6 percentage points. The recount, which was nearly finished on Thursday morning, had Calderon with an even slimmer advantage.
Calderon, from the same party as President Vicente Fox, celebrated the result but stopped short of claiming victory until the recount is formally completed.
Lopez Obrador complained the recount was carried out too quickly to be accurate and cast doubt on the impartiality of the Federal Electoral Institute, or IFE.
"No one can declare himself the winner," he said. "There are serious doubts over the way the IFE acted," he said.
Mexico's left has been wary of election fraud since a 1988 presidential vote it lost, almost certainly due to government manipulation of the vote count to help its own candidate.
Claims by Lopez Obrador and his aides that Sunday's vote may have been fraudulent are widely believed by supporters.
"They are robbing us. We are ready to continue our fight," said Alejandra Arcos, 50, a secretary, outside Lopez Obrador's campaign headquarters.
About 200 people gathered outside the building to support the leftist. "You are not alone," they shouted.
One elderly woman held a photograph of Lopez Obrador with a fake presidential sash draped over it.
The leftist was highly popular as the capital's mayor, a job he quit last year to run for president. He introduced pensions of just under $70 a month for the elderly and eased traffic by building a second tier to a busy freeway. |
