Mexico Presidential Election Ballots Found in Dump
As the apparent victor in Mexico’s presidential election switched back and forth Thursday morning, ballots were found in two garbage dumps, RAW STORY has learned. The news was accompanied by various wire reports showing that left wing candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador had rejected findings that his opponent Felipe Calderon was the winner.
Although official tallies indicated a victory for Calderon of 0.3%, the Mexican newspaper El Universal reported that 10 ballot boxes and a polling station report were found in a garbage dump in a poor neighbourhood in Mexico City, according to Reuters. The ballots came from three precincts in the city of Nezahuacoyotl, a Lopez Obrador stronghold according to the website Narco News.
In another indication of electoral fraud, ballots were also found in a second garbage dump in the city of Xalapa, the capital of the Mexican State of Veracruz. Parts of the Spanish language report were translated by a contributor to a discussion board at the website Democratic Underground.
A State Department spokesman had earlier declared that “Mexico has a vibrant and dynamic democracy and Mexican institutions are fully capable of dealing with any — you know, with any irregularities and ensuring the principles of rule of law and transparency.”
rawstory.com
Conservative wins Mexico’s protracted presidential election
Conservative candidate Felipe CalderÑn has won the final official count of Mexico’s presidential poll by a razor-thin margin but his main rival, the leftist Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, has vowed to contest the result. With 99.56% of the vote counted, Mr Calderon had 35.82%, Mr Lopez Obrador 35.37% with three other candidates sharing the remainder.
“We cannot accept these results,” Mr Lopez Obrador said yesterday at his campaign headquarters. “We triumphed and we are going to prove it.”
The charismatic champion of Mexico’s downtrodden said he would take his claim that the election was full of irregularities to the electoral tribunal within the four days allowed by law. He also called supporters to an assembly in the capital’s central plaza tomorrow, suggesting a strategy of street protests could follow.
About 42 million Mexicans voted in Sunday’s election after a protracted and often dirty campaign. It was the first presidential poll since 71 years of single party rule ended in 2000. The provisional count immediately after polls closed gave Mr Calderon, the governing party candidate, an advantage of one percentage point, but was deemed inconclusive by the electoral authorities. The final official count of the tally sheets that accompany each ballot box began on Wednesday. Usually little more than a formality to confirm the provisional result, this count had the nation on tenterhooks through the night.
Mr Lopez Obrador led until shortly before dawn when tallies from Calderon strongholds reversed the situation. Minutes later a beaming Mr Calderon addressed hundreds of cheering supporters at his headquarters and called for the result to be respected. “This has been the most competitive election we’ve ever had,” he said. “But it has been the most democratic in Mexico’s history.”
A few hours later Mr Lopez Obrador shot back that his rival should be ashamed to declare himself the winner: “They know that there is nothing to celebrate. They know what they did.”
The Lopez Obrador camp claims Mr Calderon’s supporters and the government orchestrated a subtle fraud while the votes were being counted so that the tally sheets did not reflect reality. They want the tribunal to order all the ballot boxes opened so there can be a vote-by-vote recount. According to a strict reading of the law, opening the boxes would annul the election.
his is not the first time the left has been so close, and yet so far, from power. In 1988 Cuauhtemoc Cardenas was winning the election when a computer failure stopped the count. When the lights came on he had lost. Many on the left who were bitter that Cardenas did not defend his claim to power more energetically hope Mr Lopez Obrador will not give up pushing his.