Andrés Manuel López Obrador's Speech at the PRD Demonstration Today (Translation)

eluniversal.com.mx ^ | July 8, 2006 | eluniversal.com.mx ( translated by self )

[StJacques]

The presidential candidate of the For the Good of All coalition calls for a national march for democracy which as of this Wednesday July 12 will depart all of the electoral districts of the country to concentrate in the Zócalo capital plaza¹ on Sunday the 16th; to hold President Fox and the IFE² responsible for having converted the elections into a simulation.

Andrés Manuel López Obrador, presidential candidate of the For the Good of All coalition, called for a national march for democracy to depart all the electoral districts of the country Wednesday July 12, in delivering a message to thousands of his supporters who came together in the Zócalo capital plaza.

During the event in which the PRD leader brought together some 280,000 supporters, according to the Capitol Secretary of Public Security, he called upon his followers for peaceful mobilizations and to avoid falling for the provocations of their adversaries.

"Sunday the 16th of July, in the morning 8 days from now" -- he said -- "let us carry out an informative assembly so that we come to congregate in the Zócalo. I propose a march for that day to the Museum of Anthropology at the Plaza of the Constitution of Mexico City."

The PRD leader summoned publicity committees to counteract the strategy mounted by their adversaries to confound and discourage citizen participation in support of democracy, of a form in which they can have direct communication and permanent information in case their movement is blocked by communications media.

"Because communication is not easy and it is better to take advantage of our organization so that we all know what we are dealing with."

During the informative assembly in the Zócalo capital plaza, López Obrador called upon the PRD political leadership, the Labor Party³ and Convergence⁴ to act with righteousness and to be above circumstances, as befits "free and concerned" citizens organizing and directly participating in these activities.

He particularly invited artists, intellectuals, and writers to participate in this citizen mobilization.

"These mobilizations will be carried out making use of our individual guarantees without affecting the rights of third parties. We do not want to be an encumbrance upon the citizenry. We will not close major highways," the Tabasqueño⁵ reiterated.

"This is a peaceful movement and we are not going to fall into provocation and make this a game with our adversaries."

Also, he summoned a second informative assembly for next Sunday at 11:00 in the morning and exhorted each and every one of them there in the Zócalo capital plaza to invite 10 more.

At the same time, he proposed that his followers use the familiar tricolor⁶ and he asked that they have confidence in him.

"I maintained my principles and my convictions as always, that is what I value as the most important thing in my life, I am not going to betray the Mexican people. As you will understand, this goes beyond my role as a leader, I am not going to permit a worsening of democracy, if we permit them to prevail by means of fraud [democracy] is going to be a regression, for that reason the attitude of Vicente Fox bothers me, that he comes to the presidency thanks to democratic progress, and when he is in power, he converts himself into a traitor to democracy," he said.

The presidential hopeful held President Vicente Fox and the Federal Electoral Institute responsible for having intervened so that the elections were [nothing more than] a simulation.

"Without any hiding and without taking care of the presidential investiture Fox dedicated himself to attacking us and he has finished by being a complete traitor to democracy."

On top of all of this the Federal Electoral Institute, which should act with impartiality, converted itself into an instrument of the party on the right and gave itself over entirely to an electoral simulation," he said in the speech to the informative assembly he himself had convened.

The Tabasqueño affirmed having difficult tests and announced that tomorrow he will challenge the election before the Federal Electoral Tribunal of the Judicial Power of the Federation, because he said they have violated the principles governing certainty, legality, independence, impartiality, and objectivity, consecrated in Article 41 of the Constitution.

He said he had proof that they removed votes for him to favor the candidate of the right, because this is suggested by the resistance of electoral officials who managed to open the packages⁷ to count ballots within very few casillas, and then they discovered that the PAN candidate had more votes and the For the Good of All coalition had less.⁸

"Accepting without conceding that a difference of scarcely a half point is expressed in the numbers, this change is a determining factor in the definitive result," he affirmed.

"The argument that there is no time or that there is no form to recount the votes does not sustain itself, I only maintain that beyond technical arguments or fundamental legalities that it is democracy and the political stability of the country [that is at stake]."

He said that the electoral process in accordance with the law has not yet finished, and as soon as it is going to begin, the qualification of the election will be of a kind which, he affirmed, no one can proclaim or at least be called president-elect.

"The congratulations of the foreign presidents is a pure formality," he added.⁹

"We are sure that in spite of all the undemocratic practices we triumphed on July 2nd and we did it with the free vote, conscious of the citizens, and we did not hand over construction materials nor dispensations, nor did we buy votes, nor did we make shameful agreements with the same political bosses as always, for that reason we are going to defend our triumph."

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Translator's notes:

¹The Zócalo is the main plaza in old Mexico City.

²The IFE is the Federal Electoral Institute, which conducted the vote counting in the recent election.

³The Labor Party is the Partido del Trabajo, or PT, who joined with the PRD in the coalition.

⁴The Convergence is the former Convergencia por la Democracia, which also joined the PRD in the coalition.

⁵Lopez Obrador is from the Mexican state of Tabasco and is sometimes referred to as el Tabasqueño.

⁶Lopez Obrador is telling his followers to fly the Mexican tricolor flag, not the yellow sun flag of the PRD.

⁷After ballots were counted they were sealed in packages known as casillas. ⁸Either the transcription of Lopez Obrador's speech on the El Universal web site is in error here, or Lopez Obrador is charging that electoral officials were only willing to open packages when they expected to get more votes for PAN, or he is simply rambling, it's difficult to tell. This does not appear to be something you would expect him to say.

⁹Several foreign presidents have called Felipe Calderon to congratulate him on his victory, including President Bush, and the Presidents or Prime Ministers of Canada, Spain, Colombia, and more.

[StJacques]

Ok, some brief comments from me here.

First of all; this translation falls under the heading of "Know Thy Enemy," as I do not think it particularly worthwhile to spend my time translating some of what Lopez Obrador has to say, except for the fact that we cannot let this guy out of our sight, even for a moment.

Secondly; I do not buy into the 280,000 figure the Mexico City official gives for the numbers in attendance at the demonstration. I saw one report on TV that put the number as "perhaps 150,000" and the two live shots I saw on Fox News did not show any more than that. I also must say that the crowd looked much more demoralized than I had expected. I assumed they would show up fighting mad and in my opinion they looked, well, defeated.

Thirdly; It appears to me that Lopez Obrador used this speech as an attempt to regroup and reorganize for his electoral challenge. Please note that the biggest thing to come out of this demonstration is his call for another demonstration that will be the culmination of a series of marches converging on the capital.

And finally; the fact that he is organizing these marches "from every electoral district" is not nearly so important as his announced intention that they will converge on Mexico City. It is beginning to seem to me that Lopez Obrador really only has one card to play, and that is the control he exercises over the Federal District as its Governor. It's still quite a card, given the temperament of some of his followers, but I didn't see the large numbers of supporters converging on the capital city today that I had expected.

[StJacques]

Ok guys, this is my last Mexican post-election translation for a while. I resume work tomorrow and I will be very busy until at least Wednesday. I will check in at various times during the day and evening to see who has responded and what not, but I think it is unlikely you will see anything from me until Wednesday or possibly Thursday. But I am going to keep my eye on the Mexican web sites through the week and if anything major should emerge, even if I don't have time to do a translation I will likely ping you all from within this or another thread to give you a quick update.

And you can find all of my translated articles on the Mexican election by going to the forum's search option and doing a "keyword" search for the unique keyword -- STJTRANSLATION

[NinoFan]

Thank you for your hard work, STJ. :)

[sageb1]

Again we thank you.

[norton]

Do I take it from words like "demoralized" that you don't expect much in the way of violence or mass protests?

What about isolated 'incidents' on the part of the left?

Personally, I don't trust anything to do with mexico; government or (on and off) citizenry.

[Maynerd]

Thank you for your time and efforts.

[vbmoneyspender]

that is the control he exercises over the Federal District as its Governor

Once a Chilango, always a Chilango.

[StJacques]

Believe it or not -- and you may not -- it was nice to sharpen up my translating skills. About 13 to 14 years ago when I was in grad school in history I worked part-time, to make much-needed extra cash, on a project funded by the National Historical Records and Publications Commission (NHPRC) of the National Archives, translating documents in French, mostly diplomatic exchanges from the years 1914-1921. I actually had to undergo a little training on how to do it right. But it's been over twelve years since I did any legitimate translating and I found that, even though Spanish is my second foreign language -- I speak it a little better than I do French (6 years study in French, I'm from Louisiana) -- my translating skills were a little rusty. There is a method to doing this right and I started off rather sloppily in my first couple of times out. But I got it down to the point where I can really move now and it feels kinda good to shake off some rust. And I much prefer to think that individuals as worthy as my fellow Freepers will be benefiting from my work than many others who read the NHPRC documents I translated and never knew who I was.

BunnySlippers, I'm pinging you here because I remember you asked me if I did this for a living and I neglected to mention that I once did work as a paid translator.

[sageb1]

You are doing fine. I took 5 years of French, then never had a chance to use it. So now I struggle with it.

[conservative in nyc]

Thanks.

Counting casillas where the PAN candidate gained votes and he lost votes? And that's some sort of conspiracy to take votes away from ObraGore? You're right - that doesn't make sense.

[StJacques]

"Do I take it from words like "demoralized" that you don't expect much in the way of violence or mass protests?"

Let me put it this way, what I saw today convinces me that Lopez Obrador's followers are less capable of mounting a serious challenge outside of the law than I thought they were coming into today. It's difficult for me to put my finger on their collective pulse at this great distance and I am trying to be careful to not just run off at the mouth, but I am clearly comfortable in saying this is not a movement I see gaining steam, but rather losing it. And I read into Lopez Obrador's speech that same recognition on his part. So we're going to have to wait and see what happens, but right now Lopez Obrador and the PRD are on their way to defeat unless something big happens to change that outcome.

[norton]

Thanks for what you're doing..and the reply

[StJacques]

"You're right - that doesn't make sense."

And I translated that paragraph very, very carefully conservative in nyc. This is part of the reason why I am reading some demoralization into this whole affair. I do not see Manuel Lopez Obrador very comfortable at all with making the "Tin Hat" technical argument and it seemed to me that when he approached the point where he had to make sense of his case for fraud before his audience, he failed. I think he backed off because, well frankly, he has no case.

[Dane]

I also saw the reports on Fox from Mexico City and I agree the crowd looked smaller than the almost 300,000 reported and that it did seem quite subdued.

JMO, I think that Obragore supporters know the whole world is watching and that Mexico had run one of the most transparent elections ever and that election would make Boss Daley roll in his grave.

As I have heard many times it was the votes from the cemetary districts in Boss Daley's Chicago that put JFK over the top in 1960.

[Dane]

Also thank you very much for your hard work in bringing translations to FR.

[monkeywrench]

Bttt!

[Kimberly GG]

First of all; this translation falls under the heading of "Know Thy Enemy,"

As far as I'm concerned, Calderon is just as much OUR enemy....

CALDERON SAID HE HOPED TO REACH AN ACCORD WITH WASHINGTON LEADING EVENTUALLY TO THE LEGALIZATION OF MILLIONS OF UNDOCUMENTED MEXICANS LIVING IN THE U.S.

[mcvey]

*

[texastoo]

This election has been nothing but hype. The PAN party has done more harm to the US than any other Mexican party, the PRI or the PRD.

[StJacques]

"As far as I'm concerned, Calderon is just as much OUR enemy...."

I couldn't possibly disagree with you more.

Here is a picture of demonstrators supporting Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador outside of the Federal Electoral Institute in Mexico City last Wednesday:

Try to imagine for a moment what will happen in Mexico in the Leftist supporters of Obrador come to power. We all know their economic policies will be a disaster for their country. What will happen after the disaster? Answer: 15 million more Mexicans will immigrate north to this country. On the other hand, try to envision what kinds of changes will have to take place in Mexico to encourage some of those who have come here for work to return there. Clearly there is a much greater chance of that kind of a scenario developing under Calderon's leadership than that of Lopez Obrador. It seems foolish to me not to recognize the obvious interest we all have in promoting Calderon's position within Mexico as a necessary part of any plan that will convince Mexicans here illegally in this country to return.

Now I too have real concerns about a settlement of the immigration issue in this country that would permit every illegal alien now residing in the U.S. to remain, in fact, I could never support such a proposal because it would make a mockery of our laws and I believe in the rule of law. But I think it is absolute insanity for those of us who are bothered by the immigration issue to paint all Mexicans with the same brush just to vent our anger about the depths of the immigration problem we face. A good part of that problem is our own doing. We have failed to police our borders, we have failed to enforce immigration law within our own country, we have failed to identify wage earners not paying taxes because they don't want to reveal their immigration status, we have refused to compel police agencies at every level to assist with the enforcement of immigration law, and much more.

Anyone who wants to see progress on the immigration issue should immediately understand that any prospects for success in that regard are advanced in Calderon's victory and seriously weakened should Lopez Obrador get the presidency.