MEXICO-ELECTION/SECURITY Mexico beefs up security in restive south ahead of Sunday vote

Record ID: 150594

  • Title: MEXICO-ELECTION/SECURITY Mexico beefs up security in restive south ahead of Sunday vote
  • Date: 7th June 2015
  • Summary: OAXACA CITY, OAXACA, MEXICO (JUNE 5, 2015) (REUTERS) MILITARY PLANE WITH THOUSANDS OF TROOPS ARRIVING TO AIRPORT TROOPS MARCHING TEACHER LEAVING VIA TRUCK OAXACA CITY, OAXACA, MEXICO (JUNE 6, 2015) (REUTERS) FEDERAL TROOPS MARCHING IN OAXACA VARIOUS OF PEMEX GAS TRUCK LEAVING STATION VARIOUS OF SALE OF GASOLINE VARIOUS OF MILITARY TRUCKS PASSING THROUGH CITY STREETS VARIOU
  • Embargoed: 22nd June 2015 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Mexico
  • Country: Mexico
  • Topics: General
  • Reuters ID: LVADZRM01Q6FKLWROOU256PS5CRL
  • Aspect Ratio: 16:9
  • Story Text: Mexico's government has moved about 40,000 federal police, soldiers and marines into several restive southern states to try to safeguard Sunday's (June 7) midterm elections, a source close to the operation said on Saturday (June 6).
    The forces will be spread among Oaxaca, Chiapas, Guerrero and Michoacan states, where a union and other radical groups have vowed to disrupt the vote. Political candidates have even been targeted for murder by anti-government activists angered over Mexico's enduring internal strife and gang violence that has claimed more than 100,000 since 2007. In one particularly high-profile case of violence from last September, 43 student teachers in Guerrero state went missing, resulting in uprisings from protesters demanding answers.
    The lower house of Mexico's Congress, nine state governorships and more than 1,000 posts in state legislatures and mayors' offices are up for grabs in Sunday's election. The election marks the first time that voters will be able to provide a de facto referendum on Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto's rule since he took office in 2012 on a vow to focus on economic development.
    A splinter teachers union as well as other activist groups have in recent days sowed chaos in the states including Oaxaca, burning ballots and attacking the offices of local political parties, among other disruptions.
    Speaking in Oaxaca state, an election official told Reuters the state should be ready for the Sunday vote.
    "The National Electoral Institute of Oaxaca continues working to install about five thousand electoral stalls. At this time, we have more than 90 percent of the electoral packets distributed to the (voting) presidents who will be presiding on election day," said Roberto Cardiel, an official with Oaxaca's Electoral Institute.
    Officials, however, are not downplaying just how on edge Mexico is, as evidenced by the decision to send in the troops.
    "The government has launched an operation with the objective of ensuring the vote tomorrow. An emphasis has been placed on the states where social groups have organised actions aimed at interfering with the electoral process, which has mostly been in the case in the south," said Alejandro Rubido, Mexico's National Security Commissioner during a news conference in Mexico City.
    The violence in the run-up to Mexico's mid-term elections this weekend has killed at least seven candidates and forced another 20 out of the race, battering the government's record on law and order. Along with the seven candidates, at least nine campaign officials have been killed in different areas of the country.
    Guerrero state, where 43 trainee teachers were abducted and almost certainly massacred last year by a drug cartel in league with local police, has been hardest hit by the electoral violence, in spite of pledges by Pena Nieto to restore order there.
    In Chilapa, a few miles east of the college where the 43 trainee teachers studied, the PRI candidate for mayor was shot dead by armed men at the start of May. To the northeast, in Ahuacuotzingo, a woman running for mayor for a rival party was decapitated by suspected drug gangsters earlier in the race.
    At least 20 other people went missing in May in Chilapa. After the murder of PRI mayoral candidate Ulises Fabian Quiroz campaigning all but petered out in the lawless area where drug trafficking has long been a favoured escape route from poverty.
    Fear has hamstrung candidates and voters alike across vast swaths of Mexico.
    Still, in Sunday's legislative elections, polls forecast the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, should retain a slim working majority in the lower house of Congress, partly as the main opposition parties are riven by division.
    Pena Nieto is a few seats short of a majority in the Senate, which is not up for re-election until 2018.
    Under his presidency, the murder rate has fallen in troubled parts of northern Mexico, but violence has jumped in western areas, including the country's second biggest city, Guadalajara.
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