Mexico's Election: Won't THIS Be Fun

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Re: Obrador LEADS in recount

Postby Et in Arcadia ego » Thu Jul 06, 2006 12:22 am

<!--EZCODE IMAGE START--><img src="http://www.kvraudio.com/forum/images/smiles/doh.gif" style="border:0;"/><!--EZCODE IMAGE END--> <p>____________________<br>Oderint, dum metuant</p><i></i>
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So Much Soccer, So Little Time

Postby Pissed Off Cabbie » Thu Jul 06, 2006 12:30 am

The American public's interest in this election can be summed up thusly:<br><br><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK START--><a href="http://www.godlikeproductions.com/images/smilies/qmfiplhs.gif">www.godlikeproductions.co...fiplhs.gif</a><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK END--><br><br><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK START--><a href="http://pissedoffcabbie.blogspot.com/2006/07/its-mexican-standoff.html">pissedoffcabbie.blogspot....ndoff.html</a><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK END--><br> <p></p><i></i>
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Re: Mexico's Election: Won't THIS Be Fun

Postby Sepka » Thu Jul 06, 2006 2:40 am

Should Lopez-Obrador win, I'm guessing Bush and the Republican Senators will rethink their support regarding amnesty for illegal aliens.<br><br>-Sepka the Space Weasel <p></p><i></i>
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Re: Mexico's Election: Won't THIS Be Fun

Postby Et in Arcadia ego » Thu Jul 06, 2006 2:44 am

DU member just revealed this one:<br><br><!--EZCODE LINK START--><a href="http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x2373785">Link</a><!--EZCODE LINK END--><br><br><!--EZCODE BOLD START--><strong>Election Ballots found in trash dump in Veracruz<br></strong><!--EZCODE BOLD END--><br>Members of the Democratic Revolution Party (PRD) discoverd in Xalapa, the capital of Veracruz, election ballots thrown in the trash dump, this was attested and witnessed by a public notary and notification given to the proper authorities.<br><br>In a press conference, the PRD's Chair for the state of Veracruz, Frank Rogelio Castán, confirmed that this incident is evidence of electoral fraud in Veracruz to impede the election of Andrés Manuel Lopez Obrador to the Presidency of the Republic.<br><br><!--EZCODE IMAGE START--><img src="http://www.jornada.unam.mx/2006/07/05/portada.jpg" style="border:0;"/><!--EZCODE IMAGE END--> <p>____________________<br>Oderint, dum metuant</p><i></i>
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Could be serious

Postby Dreams End » Thu Jul 06, 2006 4:15 am

This could actually get serious...and if it is too unstable down there...well, you think the US is going to sit there and let a revolution happen on our border? Especially one in response to election fraud? Yikes. <p></p><i></i>
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Re: Could be serious

Postby Gouda » Thu Jul 06, 2006 6:38 am

Yes, and there are also millions of disenfranchised Mexican voters living in the United States* with their mass mobilizing protest shoes still warm...<br><br>*Al Giordano: "Of the 4.1 million eligible Mexicans on the Other Side, only a little over 28,000 were able to get their ballots in."<br><br>***<br><br>Question: curious to know if DU considers analysis of US election stealing (2000, 2002, 2004) a legitimate discussion there, or is it also relegated to some embarassing dungeon? Did the Kennedy Jr Rolling Stone piece stay in the light there or change anything regarding the legitimacy of that issue? <p></p><i></i>
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Calderon in lead again...

Postby Gouda » Thu Jul 06, 2006 7:18 am

Latest from <!--EZCODE LINK START--><a href="http://today.reuters.com/investing/financeArticle.aspx?type=bondsNews&storyID=2006-07-06T091704Z_01_N06336139_RTRIDST_0_MEXICO-ELECTION-UPDATE-1-PICTURE.XML">Reuters</a><!--EZCODE LINK END-->:<br><br><!--EZCODE QUOTE START--><blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr><!--EZCODE BOLD START--><strong>Mexico conservative looks headed for election win</strong><!--EZCODE BOLD END--><br>Thu Jul 6, 2006 5:17 AM ET<br><br><!--EZCODE BOLD START--><strong>(Updates with Calderon taking the lead; celebrations)</strong><!--EZCODE BOLD END--><br><br>By Kieran Murray and Alistair Bell<br><br>MEXICO CITY, July 6 (Reuters) - Mexico's conservative presidential candidate Felipe Calderon appeared headed for a razor-thin victory on Thursday although his leftist rival could fight the result with legal challenges and street protests.<br><br>Calderon had 35.62 percent support with results in from 97.84 percent of polling stations, just 0.05 points ahead of anti-poverty campaigner Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador in a tense vote recount, the Federal Electoral Institute said.<br><br>Lopez Obrador had led the recount from the start but Calderon caught up and overtook him in the early hours of Thursday as late returns came in from northern and western Mexico, his conservative strongholds.<br><br>Most of the remaining polling stations still to report were also from pro-Calderon areas, and hundreds of flag-waving supporters celebrated noisily at the ruling National Action Party headquarters.<br><br>Election officials said they would only declare a winner from Sunday's election when the recount was completed later on Thursday.<br><br>In scenes reminiscent of the Florida recount in the U.S. presidential vote in 2000, the divided nation bit its nails as first Lopez Obrador and then Calderon had the upper hand.<br><br>With such a narrow margin of victory, many fear the election fight could plunge Mexico into a deep crisis.<br><br>Calderon, 43, was judged to have won a preliminary count earlier this week by 0.6 percentage points, but Lopez Obrador said it was plagued with irregularities.<br><br><!--EZCODE BOLD START--><strong>Protests broke out in the capital on Wednesday to press claims that he was the victim of fraud and Lopez Obrador warned of trouble ahead if the recount was not handled properly.</strong><!--EZCODE BOLD END--><br><br>"The stability of the country is at stake," he said, adding that all ballot boxes should be opened and every one of the more than 42 million votes be recounted, instead of a simple check of polling station returns.<br><br>Lopez Obrador is expected to challenge the result in Mexico's election tribunal and aides have said he might also call protesters onto the streets.<br><br>Fears of a major crisis sent Mexico's stock market plunging 4 percent on Wednesday and the peso currency also dropped.<br><br>Mexico's electoral court must rule on all vote disputes by Aug. 31 and formally declare a winner by Sept. 6.<br><br>Calderon, a former energy minister, would be an ally of the United States in Latin America, where left-wing leaders critical of Washington have taken power in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Uruguay and Venezuela in recent years. <hr></blockquote><!--EZCODE QUOTE END--> <p></p><i></i>
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Just look at this headline:

Postby Rigorous Intuition » Thu Jul 06, 2006 1:21 pm

<!--EZCODE BOLD START--><strong>Mexico's Calderon has <!--EZCODE UNDERLINE START--><span style="text-decoration:underline">insurmountable</span><!--EZCODE UNDERLINE END--> lead</strong><!--EZCODE BOLD END--><br><br>AP - 1 hour, 9 minutes ago<br><br>MEXICO CITY - Ruling party candidate Felipe Calderon built an insurmountable lead in Mexico's presidential vote count Thursday, but his leftist rival vowed to challenge the results in court. With 99.56 percent of the vote counted, Felipe Calderon would win even if all the remaining votes went to Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador of the Democratic Revolution Party. He had <!--EZCODE BOLD START--><strong>35.82 percent of the vote, compared with 35.37 percent</strong><!--EZCODE BOLD END--> for Lopez Obrador. <br><br><!--EZCODE LINK START--><a href="http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060706/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/mexico_elections_82;_ylt=AmFkBOoD_k5Blz2ldn6c01odl.0A;_ylu=X3oDMTBiMW04NW9mBHNlYwMlJVRPUCUl">news.yahoo.com</a><!--EZCODE LINK END--> <p></p><i></i>
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Re: Just look at this headline:

Postby Gouda » Thu Jul 06, 2006 1:26 pm

*Cough, Cough. Cough* <p></p><i></i>
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Re: Just look at this headline:

Postby sunny » Thu Jul 06, 2006 2:37 pm

Un-friggin'-believable.<br><br>what is that like .5 something % ? <!--EZCODE EMOTICON START :x --><img src=http://www.ezboard.com/images/emoticons/sick.gif ALT=":x"><!--EZCODE EMOTICON END--> <p></p><i></i>
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Re: Just look at this headline:

Postby professorpan » Thu Jul 06, 2006 4:44 pm

This is what the kicking the rotting corpse of democracy looks like. <p></p><i></i>
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i'm going blind

Postby Mentalgongfu » Thu Jul 06, 2006 7:35 pm

Hey Gouda, you need a cough drop? <br><br>I like the kind with honey on the inside. Sooths my throat. <br><br>You seem to be coughing a lot on today's threads. <br><br>What are you implying?<br><br>AP would never run a misleading headline or story on something as important as democracy.<br><br>*Cough, Cough. Cough*<br><br>Damn. it's contagious. <br> <p></p><i></i>
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NAFTA Shafta

Postby Pissed Off Cabbie » Thu Jul 06, 2006 10:01 pm

NAFTA will proceed as planned, and the Mexican leftists who get militant about it will be dealt with as "enemy combatants".<br><br>I'm new to democracy- is this good? <p></p><i></i>
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Re: NAFTA Shafta

Postby Gouda » Fri Jul 07, 2006 5:24 am

I was munching on popcorn when I read the "insurmountable" bit and the post regarding Bush's latest verbal disassociative doublespeak disorder on another thread. <br><br>I'm better now, sort of, not really, and waiting to see what Obrador, the Other Campaign, millions of Mexican people and migrant workers in America have in store for PAN and the oligarchs. <br><br>NB: The EZLN is supporting PRD only insofar as electoral justice is carried out for the people. The EZLN does not associate with or support PRD politically. Quite the reverse in fact. <p></p><i></i>
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Ross on the elections

Postby Dreams End » Sat Jul 08, 2006 11:43 am

<!--EZCODE ITALIC START--><em>From Counter Punch</em><!--EZCODE ITALIC END--><br><br>Mexico's Surreal Elections<br>Anatomy of a Fraud Foretold<br><br>By JOHN ROSS<br><br>Mexico City.<br><br>Mexican elections are stolen before, during, and after Election Day. Just look at what happened in the days leading up to the tightest presidential election in the nation's history this past July 2nd.<br><br>By law, the parties and their candidates close down their campaigns three days before Election Day. On Wednesday night June 28th as the legal limit hove into sight, a team of crack investigators from the Attorney General's organized crime unit descended on the maximum security lock-up at La Palma in Mexico state where former Mexico City Finance Secretary Guillermo Ponce awaits trial on charges of misuse of public funds ­ much of which he appears to have left on Las Vegas crap tables.<br><br>During his nearly six years in office, outgoing president Vicente Fox has often used his attorney general's office against leftist front-runner Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador to counter his growing popularity, including a failed effort to bar the former Mexico City mayor from the ballot and even imprison him.<br><br>Now. in a desperate last minute electoral ploy by Fox's right-wing National Action or PAN party to boost the fortunes of its lagging candidate Felipe Calderon, the agents tried to pressure Ponce into testifying that AMLO and his PRD party had used city revenues to finance his presidential campaign but Ponce proved a stand-up guy and ultimately rebuffed the government men.<br><br>The imprisoned finance secretary's refusal to talk greatly disappointed both Televisa and TV Azteca, Mexico's two-headed television monopoly that together have waged an unrelenting dirty war against Lopez Obrador for months and even years. Indeed, TV crews were stationed out in the La Palma parking lot to record Ponce's thwarted confession for primetime news and both networks had reserved time blocks on their evening broadcasting, forcing the anchors to scramble to fill in the gap.<br><br>That was Wednesday night. On Thursday June 29th, Lopez Obrador's people awoke to discover that the candidate's electronic page had been hacked and a phony message purportedly signed by AMLO posted there calling upon his supporters to hit the streets "if the results do not favor us." Although officials of Lopez Obrador's party, the PRD, immediately proved the letter to be a hoax, the pro-Calderon media broadcast the story for hours as if it were the gospel truth, eventually forcing the PRD and its allies to reaffirm that AMLO would abide by results released by the Federal Electoral Institute (IFE), the nation's maximum electoral authority, even if the IFE's numbers did not favor the candidate.<br><br>The PRD pledge was a reiteration of a "pact of civility" that Televisa had browbeat PRD president Lionel Cota into signing in early June. "Hackergate", as the scandal quickly became known, was designed to prevent Lopez Obrador's supporters from protesting the fraud that the electoral authorities were already preparing.<br><br>That was Thursday. On Friday, June 30th, after more than five years of false starts, Fox's special prosecutor for political crimes placed former president Luis Echeverria under house arrest for his role in student massacres in 1968 and 1971. Not only was the long overdue arrest portrayed by big media as a feather in Fox's ­ and therefore, Calderon's ­ cap but it also put the much-hated Echeverria, a pseudo-leftist with whom Calderon has often compared Lopez Obrador, back on the front pages. Since Echeverria is an emeritus member of the PRI, the bust killed two birds with one very opportunist stone.<br><br>That was Friday. On Saturday June 1st, two PRD poll watchers in conflictive Guerrero state were gunned down by unknowns, invoking the memory of hundreds of party supporters who were slaughtered in political violence after the 1988 presidential election was stolen from party founder Cuauhtemoc Cardenas, up until now Mexico's most conspicuous electoral fraud.<br><br>That was Saturday. On Sunday, July 2nd, Felipe Calderon and the PAN, aided and abetted by the connivance of the Federal Electoral Institute, Mexico's maximum electoral authority, stole the presidential election before the nation's eyes.<br><br>As mentioned above, Mexican elections are stolen before, during, and after the votes are cast. During the run-up to July 2nd, the IFE, under the direction of Calderon partisan Luis Carlos Ugalde systematically tried to cripple Lopez Obrador's campaign. Venomous television spots that labeled AMLO "a danger" to Mexico were allowed to run ­ sometimes four to a single commercial break ­ for months on Televisa and TV Azteca despite an indignant outcry from Lopez Obrador's supporters. The IFE only pulled the plug on the hit pieces under court order.<br>In a similar display of crystal clear bias, Ugalde and the IFE winked at Vicente Fox's shameless, unprecedented, and unconstitutional campaigning for Calderon, and refused to intervene despite AMLO's pleas for the president to remove himself from the election.<br><br>One of the IFE's more notorious accomplishments in this year's presidential elections was to engineer the non-vote of Mexicans in the United States, an effort that resulted in the disenfranchisement of millions of "paisanos" living north of the Rio Bravo. Undocumented workers were denied absentee ballot applications at consulates and embassies and more than a million eligible voters were barred from casting a ballot because their voter registration cards were not up to date and the IFE refused to update them outside of Mexico. Untold numbers of undocumented workers who could not risk returning to Mexico for a minimum 25 days to renew their credential were denied the franchise the IFE was sworn to defend. The PRD insists that the majority of undocumented Mexicans in the U.S. would have cast a ballot for Lopez Obrador.<br><br>The left-center party has considerable strength in Los Angeles and Chicago, the two most important concentrations of Mexicans in the U.S. When thousands of legal Mexican residents from Los Angeles caravanned to Tijuana to cast a ballot for Lopez Obrador, they found the special polling places for citizens in transit had no ballots. The 750 ballots allocated to the special "casillas" had already been taken by members of the Mexican police and military.<br><br>In Mexico City, when voters in transit lined up at one special polling place according to noted writer Elena Poniatowska, hundreds of nuns presumably voting for the rightwing Calderon displaced them and were given the last of the ballots.<br><br>Back in the bad old days when the long-ruling (71 years) Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) stole elections with impunity, most of the larceny took place in the polling stations ­ stolen or stuffed ballot boxes, multiple voting, altered vote counts ­ but since national and international observers like the San Francisco-based Global Exchange became a regular feature of the electoral landscape here, such overt fraud has diminished and the cumulative number of anomalies recorded in 130,000 casillas July 2nd seemed insignificant when compared to the size of the victory Calderon was already claiming the morning after ­ i.e. the John Kerry Syndrome, named in memory of the Democratic Party candidate's sudden capitulation in Ohio in 2004 for much the same reason.<br><br>Nonetheless, this "fraude de hormiga" (fraud of the ants) which steals five to 10 votes a ballot box, when combined with the disappearance of voters from precinct lists ("razarados" or the razored ones) can fabricate an electoral majority ­ the long-ruling PRI (which failed to win a single state July 2nd) was a master of this sort of "alquemia" (alchemy) during seven decades of defrauding Mexican voters.<br><br>During the build-up to July 2nd, independent reporters here uncovered what appeared to be IFE preparations for cybernetic fraud. One columnist at the left national daily La Jornada discovered parallel lists of "razarados" on the IFE electronic page ­ one of the lists contained multiples of the other. While Julio Hernandez made a phone call to the IFE to question this phenomenon, the list containing the multiples vanished from his computer screen.<br><br>Similarly, radio reporter Carmen Aristegui was able to access the list of all registered voters through one of Felipe Calderon's web pages ­ the list had been crossed with one containing the personal data of all recipients of government social development program benefits ­ former social development secretary (SEDESO) Josefina Vazquez Mota, is Calderon's right hand woman and the PAN candidate's brother-in-law Diego Zavala, a data processing tycoon, designed programs for both the IFE and the SEDESO. Utilizing voter registration rolls and lists of beneficiaries of government programs is considered an electoral crime here.<br><br>AMLO's people went into July 2nd fearing a repeat of 1988 when the "system" purportedly "collapsed" on election night and did not come back up for ten days. When results were finally announced, Cuauhtemoc Cardenas has been despoiled of victory and the PRI's Carlos Salinas was declared the winner.<br><br>Lopez Obrador's fears were not unwarranted.<br><br>When on July 2nd AMLO's voters turned out in record-breaking numbers, Interior Secretary officials urged major media not to release exit poll results that heralded a Lopez Obrador victory. Ugalde himself took to national television to declare the preliminary vote count too close to call and Mexicans went to bed without knowing whom their next president might be. Preliminary results culled from the casillas (PREP) that ran erratically all night and all day Monday showed Calderon with a 200,000 to 400,000-vote lead activating suspicions that cybernetic flimflam was in the works. When the PREP was finally shut down Monday night, the right winger enjoyed a commanding lead and Televisa and TV Azteca proclaimed him a virtual winner ­ U.S newspapers like the Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, and Chicago Tribune followed suit and the White House was poised to celebrate a Calderon victory.<br><br>But there was one fly in the IFE's ointment: 42 million Mexicans had voted July 2nd but only the votes of 39 million appeared in the PREP and Lopez Obrador demanded to know what had happened to the missing 3,000,000 voters. Then on a Tuesday morning news interview with Televisa, Luis Carlos Ugalde admitted that the missing votes had been abstracted from the PREP because of "inconsistencies". Indeed, 13,000 casillas ­ 10% of the total ­ had been removed from the preliminary count, apparently to create the illusion that Calderon had won the presidency.<br><br>Meanwhile all day Monday and into Tuesday, AMLO supporters throughout Mexico recorded thousands of instances of manipulation of the vote count ­ a ballot box in Mexico state registered 188 votes for Lopez Obrador but only 88 were recorded in the PREP. Another Mexico state ballot box was listed 20 times in the preliminary count. Whereas voters in states where the PAN rules the roost, cast more ballots for president than for senators and congressional representatives, voters in southern states where the PRD carried the day cast more ballots for congress than for the presidential candidates. Among the PRD states that purportedly followed this surreal pattern was Tabasco, the home state of two out of the three major party presidential candidates ­ Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador and the PRI's Roberto Madrazo.<br><br>On Wednesday morning, with the tension mounting to the breaking point and demonstrators already massing in the street, a final vote count began in Mexico's 300 electoral districts. Although the tabulation of the votes was programmed to finish Sunday, IFE officials pushed the recount ahead at breakneck speed. As the day progressed, PAN and PRI electoral officials, charging Lopez Obrador's people with trying to obstruct the process, repeatedly rejected PRD demands to open the ballot boxes and recount the votes inside one by one in instances where Lopez Obrador's tally sheets did not coincide with numbers in the PREP or were different from the sheets attached to the ballot box. When a recount was allowed such as in one Veracruz district, Lopez Obrador sometimes recouped as many as a thousand votes.<br><br>Surprisingly, by early afternoon, AMLO had accumulated a 2.6% lead over Calderon ­ and his supporters were dancing in the streets of Mexico City. And then, inexplicably, for the next 24 hours, his numbers went into the tank never to rise again at the same time that the right-winger's started to increase incrementally. By late evening, AMLO was reduced to single digit advantage and a little after 4 AM Thursday morning, Calderon inched ahead. It had taken 12 hours to count the last 10% of the votes and still there were districts that had not reported.<br><br>When Lopez Obrador addressed the press at 8:30, he condemned "the spectacle of the dance of numbers" and announced that the PRD and its political allies would impugn the election ­ he had proof of anomalies in 40,000 polling places (a third of the total) and would present them to the "TRIFE", the supreme electoral tribunal with powers to annul whole districts and states, within the 72 hours dictated by the law.<br><br>Then, in his typically hesitating, Peter Falk-like way of saying things, AMLO called for the second election ­ the one that takes place in the street ­ beginning at 5 PM this Saturday in the great Zocalo plaza at the political heart of this bruised nation.<br><br>Although Lopez Obrador's words were perhaps the culminating moment of this long strange journey, Mexico's two-headed TV monster chose to ignore them - Televisa was otherwise occupied with "entertainment" news, and soon after the screens filled up with game shows and telenovelas (soap operas.) Although it had not yet concluded, the telenovela of the vote count disappeared into the ether of morning television.<br><br>This chronicle of a fraud foretold is an excerpt from John Ross's forthcoming "Making Another World Possible ­ Zapatista Chronicles 2000-2006" to be published this October by Nation Books.<br><br><br><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK START--><a href="http://www.counterpunch.org/ross07072006.html">www.counterpunch.org/ross07072006.html</a><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK END--> <p></p><i></i>
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