MEXICO: Protesters back leftist Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador in his fight against a presidential election he says are fraud

Record ID: 214258

  • Title: MEXICO: Protesters back leftist Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador in his fight against a presidential election he says are fraud
  • Date: 9th July 2006
  • Summary: (BN02) MEXICO CITY, MEXICO (JULY 8, 2006) (REUTERS) WIDE OF PEOPLE ARRIVING AT ZOCALO ZOCALO FILLED WITH PEOPLE MEXICAN FLAG
  • Embargoed: 24th July 2006 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Mexico
  • Country: Mexico
  • Topics: Domestic Politics
  • Reuters ID: LVAF0B5UET64AXDP8SVT4CSEKF0J
  • Story Text: More than 100,000 protesters filled Mexico City's Zocalo square on Saturday (July 08) to back leftist Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador in his fight against a presidential election he says was rigged against him.
    Before the crowd, Lopez Obrador said the official razor-thin election victory of conservative Felipe Calderon last Sunday (July 02) was bogus.
    "We are going to ask for the elections to be cleaned, we are going to ask for them to count all the votes, vote by vote, voting centre by voting centre," he said.
    Supporters of the popular former mayor of Mexico City crowded into the vast square, waving yellow flags of his Party of the Democratic Revolution.
    Lopez Obrador will challenge the result in Mexico's highest electoral court, but Calderon is already looking presidential after a recount showed he won by less than 1 percentage point.
    U.S. President George W. Bush and Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero dealt Lopez Obrador fresh blows when they called his rival on Friday to congratulate him on his win.
    "No one can proclaim or call themselves President-elect. Those congratulations from foreign presidents is pure bullshit," said Lopez Obrador.
    Lopez Obrador said the party of Calderon and President Vicente Fox had quickly mastered the dirty tricks often used by the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, that ruled for 71 years until Fox toppled it in 2000.
    He called the president, his long-time rival, a "traitor to democracy."
    Lopez Obrador said count figures flashed on television had been rigged and were inconsistent with the real vote count.
    Lopez Obrador has yet to produce concrete evidence of fraud, and a team of European Union observers has said there was no large-scale irregularity or vote-rigging.
    Mexico's leftists still remember a 1988 election widely believed to have been stolen from them by the PRI.
    Lopez Obrador said his protests would be peaceful but vowed he would not give in easily.
    "We have the sufficient strength to move democracy only with peaceful demonstrations," he said, calling for massive marches next week.
    The left seeks a vote-for-vote recount instead of a new count of polling station tally sheets as happened this week. Mexican law does not allow for a count of every vote.
    The Federal Electoral Institute, which ran the election, said officials from all parties, as well as 1 million citizens who were called at random to help out on voting day, staffed polling stations and few reported any problem.
    The electoral court has until August 31 to rule on Lopez Obrador's challenge and until September 6 to declare the election winner.
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