By Rudy Poe
Mexico has continued to struggle with its presidential electoral crisis, in which accusations of fraud have mobilized thousands of supporters of the left-wing Presidential candidate of the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD), Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, to demonstrate in the streets of Mexico City. With ample evidence of fraud - vote stuffing, vote buying, President Vicente Fox’s intervention, campaigning after the cut-off date which was one week before the election date, and the manipulation of votes at voting stations - the PRD candidate and millions of sympathizers demanded a full recount.
Despite recognizing that a partial recount (approximately 9% of the total voting stations) revealed irregularities, the Federal Electoral Tribunal (TEPJF) maintains that the right-wing National Action Party (PAN) candidate, Felipe Calderon Hinojosa, won the election.
Evidence of Fraud
Mentioned in the July 3-9, 2006 News and Analysis letter from the Mexico Solidarity Network, the following is a summary of the evidence of fraud:
“The PRD is contesting the results at over 55,000 polling places. In 781 precincts, more votes were counted than registered voters, and in some precincts participation exceeded 100%. In several states that supported Lopez Obrador, more votes were registered in Senatorial and Congressional races than in the presidential race, while in several northern states that supported Calderon, the opposite was true. Alianza Civica, a non-governmental election watchdog, reported 312,450 more votes for Senate than president in PRD strongholds, while pro-Calderon states showed 403,740 more votes for president than Senate. The PRD is soliciting citizen reports of fraud at an 800 hotline. Some of the initial reports include ballots and official election reports found in dumps, PAN voters bussed into polling stations, and polling stations in PRD districts that turned away voters for lack of ballots. The PAN reportedly removed more than three million people from official election roles, apparently illegally using voter data obtained from government offices and the IFE to strike only PRD supporters. The night before the election, this reporter knows of two people who received late night telephone calls or mobile text messages encouraging votes for Calderon. Campaigning ended officially the Wednesday before the election and this kind of proselytizing is strictly prohibited after the deadline. The PRD also complained about preferential treatment by IFE officials during the campaign. President Fox spent the first six months of the year on a virtual campaign tour, handing out social programs that nearly doubled federal spending and running thinly disguised ads promoting PAN programs. Under Mexican law, the president is strictly prohibited from participation in presidential campaigns. The PAN could lose its party registration for such activities, but the IFE offered only mild criticism of Fox late in the campaign. The PAN used social programs, particularly Oportunidades, as a campaign tool, threatening recipients with loss of benefits if they didn’t vote for Calderon. Oportunidades provides small monthly stipends to mothers whose children are in school, in exchange for regular medical checkups that include family planning encouraging sterilization. Exit polls showed that 41% of recipients voted for Calderon, an astounding figure given that these women are among the poorest in Mexico and would probably have little in common ideologically with the right wing, pro-business Calderon.”
On September, 5 making a decision based on a partial recount of 9 percent of the polling station, the Federal Electoral Tribunal (TRIFE, by its Spanish initials) declared that Calderon won the election. They claimed that the irregularities did not substantiate a full recount or the annulment of voting stations that did demonstrate irregularities. According to the final statistics, the TEPJF announced that Calderon still held the lead with 14 million 916 thousand 927 votes (35.71%) while Obrador was left with 14 million 683 thousand 96 votes - a difference of only 0.56 percent between the two candidates.
Maintaining his position that the elections were fraudulent, Lopez Obrador has convened a National Democratic Convention to be held in Mexico City on September 16th, which is Mexican Independence day. Over a million delegates are expected to attend. If popular support is successfully summoned, a national democratic convention can potentially invalidate the legitimacy of the state and its’ institutions and hinder Calderon from taking office the 1st of December, 2006.
Since the center of Mexico City was taken and protest stands erected on July 30th, Obrador’s movement has remained peaceful. Historically the state has not hesitated to use police force to repress popular social movements and by launching a media campaign to persuade the public to respect the state’s institutions, the government has clumsily navigated Obrador’s formidable argument against the way state institutions have functioned in the elections. In response to threats from the state, Obrador has demanded that police force and repression not be used to repress this popular, nonviolent movement.
Despite the divisions within the PRD, the popular movement has in many ways unified the actions of the PRD. With the approach of President Vicente Fox’s final State of the Union address and the approach of the TEPJF decision, more than 150 PRD officials occupied the speakers platform of the lower house in San Lazaro, forcing Fox to address the media rather than give it to the Senate in person.
The Belly of the Beast
Given the government’s questionable actions (i.e. forcing a rushed decision from the TEPJF) in reaction to Obrador, the July 2nd elections have revealed the unjust belly of Mexico’s “democracy,” which is plagued by corruption. Even given evidence of the fraud that had taken place, the state has avoided dealing with the deeper structural-political issues revealed by the fraud and has preferred to attempt to co-opt the general public using its mass media influence.
Despite the September 5th date set by the Electoral Federal Tribunal (IFE) to decide on the winner of the election, Vicente Fox declared Felipe Calderon the winner before the decision was ever made. Using his access to the mass media, Fox is using this as a way to de-legitimize the popular movement led by Obrador. Without fully acknowledging the legitimacy of the popular movement and without recognizing the evidence of mass fraud, Fox’s use of the media is just one example of a blatant disregard for Mexican election law meant to make the elections “fairer.” When asked to respond to the allegations made upon him regarding his interference in the elections, he justified his intervention stating that in elections in other representative democracies Presidents often interfere.
Concerning the irregularities in the election, the magistrates of the TEPJF considered the participation of Fox and the business sector as, “isolated acts and not decisive.” The magistrates claim that they “did not say that the election was clean or even legal." On the contrary, there were vast irregularities, but they, as magistrates, did not have enough information to nullify or reverse the results.
The IFE is controlled by the PAN and Elba Esther Gordillo, a former PRI president who broke with the Madrazo campaign and is closely aligned with President Fox. The lower house is responsible for selecting the nine members of the IFE, and the current IFE board was chosen in backroom deals when Gordillo was the leader of the PRI faction. The PAN chose four members while Gordillo chose five, including IFE head Luis Carlos Ugalde. Immediately after completing the IFE vote count, Ugalde named Calderon as president-elect, an action that is legally the responsibility of the TEPJF. Combined with shady manipulation of election night data and the temporary “misplacement” of nearly three million votes that heavily favored Lopez Obrador, Ugalde has been at the center of fraud accusations.
Fraud and State Legitimacy
Mexico has been placed into a potentially volatile conundrum. With Calderon already recognized by the court as president-elect and with millions of Mexicans discontented by the fraud and violations of the law being allowed to go unacknowledged by the state, a divided Mexico may further fall into polemic.
With one side denouncing the elections and state institutions (coupled with the existing plethora of evidence indicating corruption), Mexico may very well realize a stronger social movement that, as campaigned by Obrador, supposedly focuses on the pueblo. Obrador has announced that he will not back down from his popular movement.
In expectation of the National Democratic Convention, which is to take place the 15th of September, Obrador has proposed the creation of a government in resistance - an act that, in many respects, abusing the rhetoric of the zapatistas, stating: “Imagine what could be made with a legitimate government, with a legitimate president. One who would travel the entire country and go to all of the communities and towns to listen to the people.” Nevertheless, as Mexico City’s past governor, Obrador has maintained close ties with capital interests while harboring the image as the defender of the poor.
The polemic in Mexico, including the major social movements in Atenco, Oaxaca, and Mexico City, is a reaction of the people against the government of Mexico, and in many ways against the neoliberal economic reforms ushered in during Salinas de Gortari's era (1988-1994). Calderon has only proposed to continue the same neoliberal projects that have led to the privatization of national resources and the exacerbation of the desperate condition of the rural economy while concentrating capital into the hands of the few. Feeling alienated by the big promises that the Fox administration failed to keep (and Calderon’s agenda for Mexico) much of Mexico has grown even more skeptical of the institutions and the agenda of the government.
The elections represent only the tip of the iceberg. Considering the dialogue of fraud, corruption seems to have run amok within the state institutions to impose the PAN candidate and to assert the state’s economic agenda. Many in the PRD feel a deep concern for what democracy means in Mexico. The electoral fraud appears to have shown symptoms of a virtual dictatorship where substantial state resources were invested in a candidate that would continue Fox’s neoliberal agenda. If the electoral system is plagued by corruption, then what are the people voting for? Voting in these last elections appears to have been a façade to create the image of representative democracy, where the people decide on a candidate who will decide for the people. In theory, a representative democracy is just given that corruption does not prosper and leaders comport themselves with a morality that is only theoretically possible. With the events and decisions made to name a candidate, the people appear to exercise miniscule democratic choice over the decisions that most affect them.
The election fraud has, however, served as a more volatile catalyst to mobilize the people who are revealing that the pathways of power are concentrated in the hands of corrupt officials. If anything, the polemic created by the elections can help society question what democracy means. For example, what is a democracy when it is infiltrated by corruption? Even if corruption was not an issue, the division of the country (not a single candidate having over 50 percent of the vote) shows that only a small portion of the country decides who leads. Compiled with fraud within the electoral system there appears to be only one group exercising democratic choice: the corrupt elite.
