Posted on 08/07/2006 4:46:08 AM PDT by Flavius
MEXICO CITY, Aug 6 (Reuters) - Mexico's leftist opposition leader pledged on Sunday to organize new mass protests to force a full recount of votes in a tight presidential election he narrowly lost, and warned it could be a long battle.
Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said he would extend his campaign of civil resistance, which has paralyzed the capital for the past week, starting with a huge demonstration outside Mexico's top electoral court on Monday.
Aides also said protests would be organized wherever conservative President Vicente Fox travels inside Mexico.
"We are going to prepare ourselves for a struggle that could take us more time, but will certainly not be in vain," Lopez Obrador told supporters in Mexico City's Zocalo square, where he and thousands of followers are living day and night.
The electoral court on Saturday rejected Lopez Obrador's demands for a recount of all 41 million votes in the July 2 election, which was won with a razor-thin margin by his conservative ruling party rival, Felipe Calderon.
Instead, it ordered recounts at just 9 percent of voting stations. If they show Lopez Obrador with more support than in the initial result, they would help him push for further recounts, but he railed against the decision.
"We don't want one-tenth of a democracy. We want a 100 percent democracy," said the anti-poverty campaigner and former mayor of Mexico City, pledging to pressure the court's seven judges to change their minds and open every single ballot box.
Lopez Obrador's speech was full of fiery rhetoric but was short on details of what he would do next in a campaign that has crippled the capital, unnerved financial markets and raised fears that Mexico's political crisis could drag on for months.
Calderon won the election by less than 0.6 percentage points and Lopez Obrador says the count was rigged, with irregularities at more than half the 130,500 polling stations.
TRAFFIC CHAOS
His supporters have occupied the Zocalo and set up camp along Reforma, the main boulevard running through Mexico City's business district, since last Sunday, sleeping in the middle of the road and causing traffic chaos across swathes of the capital.
Although the demonstrations so far have been peaceful, Fox's government has increased security at Mexico City's international airport, power plants and oil refineries in preparation for new protests.
The partial recounts, which begin on Wednesday and will be completed next Sunday, could either give the leftist a huge boost or put him under pressure to accept defeat and call off the protests.
For now, he shows no sign of giving in. He said on Sunday he would never accept a negotiated settlement in return for cabinet seats in a coalition government proposed by Calderon.
"Our objective is not to hold public posts. It is to change economic policy, to combat poverty and inequality," he said. "We are not going to surrender."
The election campaign split Mexico along class lines and those divisions have only sharpened since July 2, threatening its young democracy just six years after Fox's historic election victory ended seven decades of one-party rule.
"This is a struggle between poor and rich, one we have been fighting for decades," said Jorge Reyes, a 35-year-old bus driver who joined the protests in support of Lopez Obrador. (Additional reporting by Catherine Bremer)
No. It's a struggle between democracy and dictatorship.
And Obrador is on the side of dictatorship.
He lost. In a democracy, that's the end of the story.
It's time for Mexico's poor who, live in this country, to head south and support their ...uh..Leader.
My wife and I just got back from a week of house hunting
in Ajijic, 30 miles south of Guadalajara on Lake Chapala.
We hired a guide to take us thru the different neighborhoods and she was quick to point out the one fact
everyone seems to have forgotten about the election fight.
Obredor received only 35% of the TOTAL VOTE, as there was
a 3rd party candidate (also pro-business). She wishes the
electoral tribunal would order a run-off between Calderon
and Obredor as Calderon would receive the majority of the
3rd party vote and CRUSH Obredor once and for all.
Why hasn't he been arrested ?
This is why the dims are now ordering all these polls showing them winning in November ... so that when they lose, they can shriek they wuz robbed because their custom made polls showed them as winning.
And the gullible and uninformed will agree.
What? I thought Mexico had already sent all their poor worthless souls to the U.S.
Now if only Mexico would legislate heavily enough against the formation of such traffic-blocking human walls, especially given how the USA is finally putting a wall on its Southern border to pressure Mexico to finally embrace its own pro-entrepreneurial reformers (like Felipe Calderon, who could make life less cushy for Mexican oligarchs like telecommunications monopolist Carlos Slim).
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