Mexican Tribunal Rules Against Lopez Obrador's Request for a Complete Recount (Translation)

The Electoral Tribunal presented the legal-electoral obstacles that the For the Good of All coalition¹ did not surpass to attempt a precinct by precinct, vote by vote recount.

The Electoral Tribunal of the Judicial Power of the Federation (TEPJF) rejected this morning the aspiration of the For the Good of All coalition that they carry out a recount of all the votes of all the precincts set up for the presidential election of this past July 2.

To the hope of leaving it to judge this aspect of the vote, the Secretary of Study and Counts, Flavio Galvan, presented the legal-electoral obstacles the coalition did not overcome to attempt the precinct by precinct, vote by vote recount:

1. It did not challenge, as the law requires, the [counts within the] 300 electoral districts in which the country was divided for the July 2 election, it only did so in 230, by which it left the rest excluded.

2. The accumulation of all the challenges will not proceed, as the coalition solicits, because no support for it exists in [legal] doctrine and jurisprudence.

3. It did not provide evidence of the alleged irregularities, which would make an intervention by federal government officials improper.

In this section [the Tribunal] determined that some of the serious irregularities indicated by the actor or plaintiff, which is to say the For the Good of All coalition, correspond to the pre-campaign or campaign phase, without reaching or showing an impact in the process of the scrutiny and counting [of votes]. They thus related the apparent defamatory campaigns against the flag-bearer of the coalition, coming from government, religious, or foreign business sectors.

4. Neither did the coalition properly justify its claim in the sense of which the number of null votes were atypical, even with relation to the votes obtained by non-registered candidates.

5. With respect to the claim of an interference of the New Alliance party in favor of the PAN candidate² in various electoral precincts, the coalition did not specify those precincts, which they could have given, that this situation existed.

6. In the same manner, the coalition did not explain in its demand, the supposed partiality of the authorities of the IFE³ to the attention and solution of complaints related to [political] parties and coaltions.

7. The Tribunal also rejected the complaint in which [the coalition] alleged a supposed negligence on the part of the Fepade.⁴

8. Moreover, it rejected the pretention that the magistrates take into account the experience of the recounting of votes in nations such as Costa Rica and Italy, because they know not to sustain these precedents from other countries in favor of the complainant.

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Translator's Notes:

¹The "For the Good of All" coalition refers to the union of Lopez Obrador's PRD (Party of the Democratic Revolution) Party, the Labor Party, and the Convergence for Democracy Party behind his presidential campaign.

²Felipe Calderon, the PAN presidential candidate and virtual winner of the July 2 presidential election.

³The Federal Electoral Institute, which oversees Mexican elections and is charged with counting the votes.

⁴Acronym for the Special Office for Electoral Crimes (Fiscal Especial para Delitos Electorales), charged with handling complaints of electoral misconduct.

Okay everyone, think of this ping as an "update" rather than an "alert," as I just want to inform all of you of a couple of minor items and to let you all know that I expect more important news to be coming out of the Mexico City meeting Lopez Obrador is holding in the Zocalo capital square this afternoon.

First; the Mexico City newspaper La Crónica de Hoy has put up a more detailed discussion of the Electoral Tribunal's decision yesterday (in Spanish) at:

http://www.cronica.com.mx/nota.php?id_nota=254745

The article essentially recapitulates what is in the translated article at the top of this thread, but with more detail, especially on what the Tribunal said to Lopez Obrador's representatives. I did get the impression from what I read that the presiding judge of the Tribunal, Leonel Castillo Gonzalez, seemed to accuse the "For the Good of All" coalition of making wild accusations and ignoring the dictates of Mexican law which he spelled out to them repeatedly when framing the Tribunal's response, which, by the way, was by unanimous vote of the seven magistrates. There are two specific pieces of information I want to relate from that article, and these pertain to questions asked yesterday near the beginning of this thread as to whether this guaranteed that there actually would be a hand recount of the ballots in the affected precincts, and the answer clearly is "yes it does"; and where are the actual precincts that will be recounted located (whose boxes are we talking about here?). After reading this article I can now tell that in Mexican electoral law there is a distinction made between "Scrutiny" and "Count." "Scrutiny" refers to a re-examination of the Actas, which are the official reports of votes from each Casilla or precinct. And "Count" refers to the actual counting of the ballots within each precinct. The Tribunal has declared that both shall take place in the 11,839 precincts, so that means they will all be recounted one by one.

Now; to the question asked about where the precincts to be recounted are located, to which I responded that all that I knew is that they were PAN strongholds; I can now put up a list: Aguascalientes; Baja California; Guanajuato; Jalisco; Morelos; Querétaro; San Luis Potosí and Yucatán. The only central Mexican state PAN carried where no recounts will take place is Tlaxcala (located to the northeast of Mexico City). And I note with interest that Sonora, Chihuahua, and Coahuila are not on the list which strikes me as important, because these are the three states where PRD representatives disrupted the work of the IFE on the Wednesday following the election, delaying their reporting of votes. If those three are not going to be recounted it is a big slap in the face to AMLO and the PRD because they maded a lot of noise alleging fraud there on the occasion of the certified count.

Right now AMLO and his supporters are meeting in Mexico City and I expect I'm going to see some news coming out of this and I believe exactly what is said will be very important. Yesterday a prominent PRD Senator, Raymundo Cardenas of Zacatecas, made some very specific threats about what would be done (see my post #15 above) including the disruption of telephone and internet service throughout the country. And in my post #24 above you will see that the Fox government has sent in elements of the Army and Navy (I don't know if the Mexican Navy has units like our Marines, but I suspect this is what we're talking about here) into Mexico City to guard important government and economic sites which AMLO and his followers may consider specific targets. So the tension is there and I will be very interested to see whether AMLO decides he wants to take the destructive route some of the hard-line PRD militants are calling for or whether he urges a more calm and peaceful course of action. What must be clearly evident to AMLO right now is that his shutdown of central Mexico City this past week, which has damaged his own support among Federal District residents and has cost him the backing of some top labor unions, did not intimidate the Electoral Tribunal or the federal government. So it will be very interesting to see what AMLO plans.

"If those three are not going to be recounted it is a big slap in the face to AMLO and the PRD because they made a lot of noise alleging fraud there on the occasion of the certified count."

Excellent news. I'm glad that they basically told them that their accusations were looney and without substance.

As to bringing in the Navy, I suspect that their Navy also has a contingent of Marines. Our early Navy needed Marines for land engagements, but the Marines have grown to be basically independent of the Navy. There has been talk of the Navy instituting another land engagement force, not of Marines, but of sailors who will be trained in duties similar to the Marines. The Navy has a lot of people who can be trained, since only one in 10 is accepted into the SEALS.

Evidently they were in the U.S. for a little while last year.

"KELLY USA, Texas, Sept. 26, 2005 – Not since the 1840s has the Mexican military flown its flag as a deployed military force in the United States, Mexican officials here said today - especially so close to the site of the famed battle of the Alamo where Texas volunteers fought the Mexicans in a bloody daylong clash.

On Sept. 25, the 184-person Mexican army contingent completed its 20-day long mission to provide relief to hurricane victims and relief workers from Katrina and Rita.

In a small ceremony here conducted by the Mexican consulate, the Mexicans ceremonially ended their mission. Now they will break down their camp, pack their equipment, fold their flag and drive back to Mexico.

Mexican Army in Texas

Nice post. Some things that may be worth considering when trying to predict AMLO's moves:

*School is back in session soon, supposedly in another week. The day that TRIFE announces the vote recount results, the youth will be in school accessing the internet and listening to teachers. Mexico's got a lot of young voters and potential ones, and AMLO needs to be on the tip of their tongues at least for a while so he can run again in half a decade.

*The PRD's Cardenas, their presidential candidate in 1988, protested a truly bizarre electoral result that year, and managed to become the candidate again in 1994, and I believe in 2000 as well. His support dwindled each time but such 1988 protests nevertheless kept Cardenas (a lousy debater whose governorship of Mexico City was considered even more lousy) from being accused of "fixing" matters with the opposition. In contrast, in 1994 Diego Fernandez of the PAN was accused of "fixing" matters instead of protesting after his presidential elections loss, and he was not seriously considered as a potential contender in 2000. Fox was allowed to run away with the PAN's nomination in 2000, and Felipe Calderon was not only not pleased, but was fired by Fox years later over something minor (sort of campaigning in Jalisco, while serving as Energy Secretary for less than a year). So Lopez Obrador may be trying to solidify his chances of winning the party nod unopposed again in 2012. He may also hope that these antics will make him a politically viable force during the entire Calderon presidency, too.

Regardless, Mexico hasn't had a lawyer as president in decades. Felipe will know how to deal with this sort of mess, even if merely from behind the scenes prior to his Dec. 1st inauguration. Blocking traffic like this needs to become a federal crime, punishable severely. Otherwise how can Mexico compete against China and so on and so forth....

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