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Politics : American Presidential Politics and foreign affairs -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Peter Dierks who wrote (11661)	9/5/2006 10:46:06 AM
From: CYBERKEN	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 71588

The Mexican Chico Chavez is stopped for now...

To: Peter Dierks who wrote (11661)	9/6/2006 3:42:52 PM
From: Peter Dierks	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 71588

A victory for Calderón, and democracy. Wednesday, September 6, 2006 12:01 a.m. EDT Despite all the focus on the Middle East, the world's biggest test of democracy these days has arguably been unfolding right on America's doorstep, in Mexico. Yesterday that country took a giant step forward as its independent federal electoral tribunal officially named National Action Party candidate Felipe Calderón as the country's president-elect. Mr. Calderón, who will take office on December 1, had won a narrow plurality of votes in the fiercely fought July 2 election. But second-place finisher Andrés Manuel López Obrador has refused to accept the results, charging fraud and promoting civil unrest to force the tribunal to nullify the results. More than a few Mexican power-brokers have privately hoped for a similar outcome--which was all too imaginable in a country that only six years ago ended 70 years of rule by the Institutional Revolutionary Party. So the conclusion of the seven-judge tribunal ought to be a moment of pride for Mexicans. It is a sign of political maturity that even such a close election can be fairly adjudicated. The tribunal had sponsored partial recounts in contested precincts, but in the end reduced Mr. Calderon's victory margin by only a few thousand votes. The result confirms the election-day judgment of foreign observers, who called the vote one of the cleanest they'd seen. Some one million Mexicans had voluntarily manned polling places on election day. The challenge now is for all Mexicans to accept these results so that Mr. Calderón is able to govern. That's by no means a sure thing, as Mr. López Obrador's militancy has shown. The leftist leader has again rejected the result and pledged to continue his campaign of civil disobedience. He says he'll hold his own "democratic convention" on September 16, which is Mexico's independence day, when he could be named the alternative president. His potential to cause trouble was on display last Friday, as members of his Revolutionary Democratic Party blocked Mexican President Vicente Fox from delivering his final state of the union address before the national congress. They mobbed the speaker's platform and refused to move. Rather than engage in a shoving match, or worse, Mr. Fox maintained his dignity and walked away. It's as if Tom DeLay had refused to let Bill Clinton deliver his annual address on Capitol Hill. Tellingly, Mr. López Obrador is validating the warnings about his authoritarian tendencies made by the Calderón camp. Mr. Calderón was down in the polls until his supporters suggested that Mr. López Obrador was a dangerous leader in the mold of Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chávez. And last week the leftist leader, sounding very much like Mr. Chávez, said his opponents "can go to hell with their institutions." By that he apparently means Mexico's democratic institutions. The good news is that these antics aren't playing well with the broader Mexican public. Polls now indicate that Mr. Calderón would beat the leftist by more than 20 percentage points if the election were held today. Mr. López Obrador's sore loser tactics may also be alarming some members of his own party, who don't want to delegitimize their own July 2 election to congress. Managing all of this will be a test of Mr. Calderón's leadership and political skills. His rhetoric since July 2 has rightly stressed national reconciliation, and he has reached out to left-of-center moderates. He should continue to do so in the interests of healing wounds and also to weaken Mr. López Obrador's support. But if violence erupts, Mr. Fox and the president-elect will also have to show Mexicans they can enforce public order. Mr. Calderón can help his cause by re-invigorating the economic reforms that will produce broader Mexican prosperity. The country has made enormous progress away from its socialist past--for example, moving up 19 places (to 43 from 62) in the annual World Bank "doing business" report released today. But too many monopolists still use government to block competition and maintain their economic privilege. A good place to start would be to enforce the deregulation of the telecom industry in which billionaire Carlos Slim, through Telmex, owns 95% of the fixed-line market and virtually all data transmission. Mr. López Obrador's anti-poverty message won't resonate among Mexicans who experience more opportunity and rising incomes. There's also a role here for the rest of the world, especially for U.S. political leaders who should be supporting Messrs. Fox and Calderón now that the tribunal has spoken. The special counsel for the Gore-Lieberman Recount Committee in 2000, Ronald Klain, was disgraceful on this score when he wrote in the July 9 Washington Post that Mr. López Obrador should "call his supporters to the streets and question the legitimacy of the vote casting and counting process. . . . Above all, he must reject any suggestion that Calderón received more votes--indeed, he must insist that any fair count would show that he is the rightful winner." Mr. López Obrador seems to have taken that bad advice, at great potential cost to Mexican stability and democracy. It's time for Yankees who care about our southern neighbor to stop using Mexico 2006 as an excuse to settle scores from Florida 2000 and start reinforcing the vital institutions of Mexican democracy. The last thing the U.S. needs is an unstable, ungovernable Mexico. opinionjournal.com