Mexican Standoff

sploid.com | August 10, 2006

Mexico held its presidential election more than a month ago, but the crooked contest is far from settled.

Supporters of Mexico City's former mayor, the populist Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, seized the capital nearly two weeks ago and took dramatic new measures on Tuesday.

That's when masses of protesters took over toll-road booths all around the giant city, letting everyone enter for free. While the symbolic seizure of government facilities will hardly bankrupt Mexico, the steady unrest has already hurt the national currency and stock market.

Mexico's election commission has reluctantly began recounting paper ballots from a small fraction of the 130,000 polling station -- only 9% will get a second look.

But even a total recount wouldn't address the widespread reports of ballot-box stuffing by conservative candidate Felipe Calderon's henchmen, or the hundreds of ballot boxes found dumped in landfills on Election Day.

Exit polls showed Obrador winning by a small but solid margin of 1.1% while the day's vote totals favored Obrador right up until the final hours.

Investigative journalist Greg Palast, who was in Mexico City for the election, describes the bizarre scene in Tuesday's Guardian:

"The nation's tens of thousands of polling stations report to the capital in random order after the polls close. Therefore, statistically, you'd expect the results to remain roughly unchanged as vote totals come in. As expected, Obrador was ahead of the right-wing candidate Calderon all night by an unchanging margin -- until after midnight. Suddenly, precincts began reporting wins for Calderon of five to one, then ten to one, then as polling nearly ended, of a hundred to one."

Calderon claimed total victory with his shady 0.6% lead, and his compadre George W. Bush rushed to congratulate the pro-Washington conservative.

Protests aren't limited to the capital city. In Oaxaca, ongoing labor protests have merged with the Obrador cause. Protesters have taken over the historic town beloved by tourists, paramilitary gunmen have attacked a student radio station supporting the cause, and travelers have stayed away in droves.

The Oaxaca standoff became even more tense this month as protesters have blockaded all government buildings for 10 straight days. Some 300 heavily-armed federal police arrived Monday, NarcoNews reported.

And approximately 20 smaller Oaxacan towns around the state capital are holding similar actions, with city halls and government ministry bureaus all closed off by the angry crowds.

Reporter John Gibler describes the cosmetic differences between the Oaxaca and Mexico City movements:

"In Oaxaca -- a city also currently under a siege of civil resistance -- thousands of protestors sleep out in the streets on cardboard boxes under sheets of plastic; leaning against walls, they read the paper, knit and talk amongst each other as they occupy the town square and shut off access to state government buildings. But in the AMLO encampment protestors gather to watch political documentaries on widescreen television sets, listen to blues guitar and protest songs at outdoor open-mikes fully equipped with professional sound systems, and even stand in line to take their turn riding an old-style Western mechanical bull."

But the party atmosphere may quickly fade if Mexico's famously corrupt political system awards the presidency to Calderon.

"Until now we have concentrated an important part of our protests in the capital, but in this new stage we are going to carry out actions all over the country," Guadalupe Acosta of Obrador's Democratic Revolution Party said Tuesday, according to AP.

"They will be coordinated, national actions with the same objective: that they open the boxes and count the votes."