Posted on 07/08/2006 9:45:52 PM PDT by NormsRevenge
MEXICO CITY - Leftist presidential candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador called on a huge crowd of supporters Saturday to keep peacefully protesting as he goes to court to challenge what he called his fraudulent electoral defeat.
The fiery former Mexico City mayor said he would present fraud allegations to Mexico's electoral court on Sunday and formally request that all 41 million votes be recounted.
The ruling party's Felipe Calderon can't be declared president-elect until the electoral court weighs allegations of fraud or unfair campaign practices. The court has until Sept. 6 to declare a winner.
"We are going to ask that they clean up the elections. We are going to ask that they count all the votes, vote-by-vote, poll-by-poll," Lopez Obrador said, calling on the army to protect the integrity of every ballot box.
Election monitors from the European Union said they found no irregularities in the count. Calderon says the vote was clean and has taken congratulatory phone calls from President Bush and the leaders of Canada, Spain and Colombia, among others, despite Lopez Obrador's plea for foreign governments to hold off on recognizing the result.
Lopez Obrador called for nationwide marches beginning Wednesday and converging on Mexico City for a July 16 rally.
He provoked groans of disappointment when he told the crowd of more than 100,000 packing Mexico City's central plaza not to block highways during the marches.
"This has been and goes on being a peaceful movement," he said. "We are not going to fall for any provocations."
The likelihood of continuing demonstrations suggests how difficult it will be for Calderon to unify Mexicans, many of whom believe the nation has yet to overcome the decades of institutional corruption and fraud that kept its leaders in power.
Lopez Obrador has repeatedly evaded questions about whether he would accept court decisions that go against him.
Lopez Obrador took direct aim at President Vicente Fox, accusing him of conspiring with Mexico's autonomous elections agency, known as IFE, to engineer a Calderon victory.
Election officials say Calderon, of Fox's National Action Party, beat Lopez Obrador by less than 244,000 votes out of 41 million ballots — or a margin of about 0.6 percent.
Lopez Obrador said Fox had betrayed the Mexicans whose outrage over repeated election fraud swept him into power in 2000 after 71 years of single-party rule by the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI.
"He dedicated himself to attacking us and ended up being a complete traitor of democracy," Lopez Obrador said. "And if that weren't enough, the IFE, which should act with impartiality, turned into the pawn of the party of the right."
Evoking a computer crash that flipped Mexico's 1988 elections in the PRI's favor, he claimed the government used a computer program to intentionally skew initial reports of vote counts.
Lopez Obrador has millions of devoted followers who believe only he can help Mexico's poor and downtrodden. Most of his supporters come from Mexico City and poor southern states, while Calderon's strength is in Mexico's industrialized north.
Lopez Obrador claims a manual recount would confirm that hundreds of thousands of votes for him remain uncounted, miscounted or voided. The law allows such a recount only for specific polling places where credible evidence of irregularities exist. The leftist's supporters say that applies to at least 50,000 of the approximately 130,000 polling places.
The crowd in Mexico City's famed Zocalo plaza would accept nothing less than victory.
"We are never going to recognize this man (Calderon)," said Apolinario Fernandez, 37, a teacher from Lopez Obrador's home state of Tabasco in the southeast. "If he wants, let him govern in the north for the rich, but not in the south."
Smaller demonstrations were held Saturday in Tijuana on the U.S. border and San Cristobal de las Casas in the south.
Many traveled all night to arrive at the Zocalo, joining a sea of yellow, the color of Lopez Obrador's Democratic Revolution Party.
"We are ready to do whatever is necessary," said Belisario Cruz, 32, a farmer from Tabasco. "We are tired of the rich having everything and the poor having nothing."
There were no immediate reports of arrests or violence.
Lopez Obrador must walk a tightrope in coming days. If he appears too radical, he risks hurting his party and its chances in the next presidential elections in 2012. If he appears too moderate, he risks disappointing his core supporters.
Political analyst Oscar Aguilar predicted that he will never concede defeat.
"Once the election results are certified, he will open a permanent campaign of criticizing the government," Aguilar said.
Supporters of Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, presidential candidate for the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD), hold a papier-mache pig with a picture of Felipe Calderon, candidate of the National Action Party (PAN), and the initials of the Federal Electoral Institute (IFE), at a rally to protest against the result of last weekend's election in Mexico City's Zocalo square July 8, 2006. REUTERS/Jorge Silva (MEXICO)
Mexican presidential candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, of Democratic Revolutionary Party, looks at charts supposedly showing electoral irregularities during a press conference in Mexico City. As many as 400,000 people turned out to protested what they said was a fraudulent conservative victory in Mexico's election, which Obrador challenged in court, organizers said.(AFP/Susana Gonzales)
Oh, good, the DUmmies can blame this on Karl Rove, too.
Whaterya doin down here pingin to yerself an talkin to yerself???
He already asked. They said "no way Jose".
That furrowed-brow, tight-lipped grimace is kind of Clintonian, I think.
I think you are right on ... he has much in common with Clinton.
Is that a rug he's wearing toward the back of the top of his head?
Name is Obragore?
Big hair turns lefties on. They think it is virile. But how virile can you be when they are all metrosexuals?
Obragore ping
Earlier estimates were higher:
MEXICO CITY (AFP) - A massive crowd, estimated at 280,000 by authorities and 400,000 by organizers, has protested the conservative victory in Mexico's presidential election, which the leftist candidate challenged in court. (http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1662577/posts)
Al Gore's legacy to the world
Now why doesn't that surprise me?
The political left has never lost an election. Ever. I'm talking worldwide, and I'm talking since the Bronze Age. They've never lost, ever. Just ask any leftist.
Of course, they've had elections stolen from them. Every leftist loss, in fact. Stolen. Yep. Every time.
"Taking it to the streets" is a time-honored leftist tradition. Not much anyone can do about it, other than laugh. It will come to naught.
As soon as Obrabor comes out against Global Warming, we will know that his political transformation into Algore is complete.
Has anyone come up with a good analysis on if he really thinks he can reverse this, or does he have some other goal in mind? The stakes are very high for him and his party either way.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.