How Mexico voted and "not voted"

international | politics / elections | opinion/analysis

Monday July 03, 2006 20:18

by iosaf

or how "the other other campaign" faired..,

Voters went to the polls in Mexico, a federation of 31 states and one district yesterday the 2nd of July to directly elect their new President. There are roughly 106.5 million Mexican citizens and their state ranks 12th in the World GDP and 4th for "per capita income" in Latin America.

The "not voting" thing was very simple for Mexico, 2005 saw Chiapas agree to send Sub Comandant Marcus out on a nation-wide "other campaign". Officially 99.4% of ballot offices were opened without incident, and 58.91% of the electorate voted. That means an abstention of roughly 41%.

The "voting" thing has produced a result so narrow that the Federal Electoral Institute can't call the election yet. The mechanism used dictates that the candidate with "plurality of votes" shall win, even if that candidate hasn't got more than 50%. If the IFE can't call the results, it means there is less than 0.3% difference in the results. there is no mechanism for a "run-off" election which readers will remember occured in the recent Peruvian presidential elections.

In Nahuatl, Teotihuacan means 'The City of the Gods', or 'Where Men Become Gods'. who will sit atop the Mexican pyramid next? probably the same eagle as usual.

____________________________________________________________________________

The outgoing president is Vincent Fox, whose links with Fox news and The Simpsons were never proven conclusively enough to be taken seriously. He was though the first president to be deemed "elected directly and fairly" in Mexico's history : & Mexico has a very very long history, (they used to build pyramids). But the constitution disallows a president to serve a second term - This left 8 nationwide political parties squabbling over who would get the candidatures. Most of the parties descrive themselves as "left wing". This really ought not surprise us, Chiapas is in many ways the heart of our new global leftism and so it sort of makes sense that the federal government who gave the Zapatista's and EZLN such a hard time thinks of itself as "socialist". But not the sort of "socialism" readers of Indymedia ireland like, which is probably why Mexico is one of those states in Latin America which broke diplomatic relations with Venezuela. ( I'd blame their neighbours influence for that).

Here are the preliminary results :-
http://www.elecciones2006.unam.mx/PREP2006/PRESIDENTE/n....html

I'm not going to bore or bamboozle the Irish reader with state by state results, merely bring their attention to the nationwide participation of 58.91% and that of our favourite state, Chiapas where 49.47% of those registered to vote did so.

Nor am I going to waffle about the party politics of Mexico - here's a quote from the good people of "election world" who now work through Wikipedia - "Eight political parties participated in the 2006 presidential election; five of them joined forces in two different electoral coalitions. Competition was fierce, with the National Action Party (PAN) eager to hold on to the presidency for a second period, the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) equally keen to regain the office it lost in the 2000 election for the first time in 71 years (now in coalition with the Ecologist Green Party of Mexico), and the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) believing itself with a good chance to win after disappointments in the two previous elections (now in coalition with Convergence and the Labor Party)."

For those of you who read Spanish here is a round-up of front pages on the newspapers today
http://www.elfinanciero.com.mx/ElFinanciero/Portal/cfpa...y=ASC

For those of you without any Spanish, its quite simple - everyone says the won. It reminds me of the article which I chose to put up the first picture of Marcus on the campaign trail -
http://www.indymedia.ie/newswire.php?story_id=72055 "the government has won the election".
For that article reported the elections in Germany & Afghanistan which stretched the norms of democracy and meritocracy to the sublimely ridiculous. Thankfully the Mexican constitution can not see a "shared presidency or grand coalition". But these are odd days for them. Vincent Fox must step down, the new person must come into the office and deal with the problems of Mexico which broadly speaking are :-

* Climate Change............. (their hurricanes don't hit your tellies)
* Migration.......................... (you've seen the wall by now)
* Fair price for Oil.............. (they've had that problem since Oil was discovered and lost their northern states like Texas to the USA because it)
* the Trade Block questions.....................For most intensive purposes Mexico is the most important political acquisition of NAFTA, for the USA it opened the door to 21st century capitalist rather than merely covert (or less frequently) military intervention in Latin America.
* Pollution.......................... Mexico City is a prime example of urban pollution, the city founded by the Spanish conquistador Hernan Cortes in 1521, sits between volcanoes (two of which are active and the object of the most advanced volcanic laser monitoring system in the world) at an altitude of between 4000 and 5,500 metres above Sea Level ( = 13,000 to 18,000 feet), with a population of roughly 18 million people, Mexico City is too put in plainly "over-crowded" and the air is almost unbreathable. In fact street kids who make it, are happy to get the job selling whiffs of oxygen from bottles they carry through the traffic jams. The street kids who don't make it, just sell themselves, sniff glue and dream about washing a windscreen. Pollution is not just confined to the urban areas, almost 200 years of mineral and energy resources exploitation has left huge areas of the country "in a sorry state".

One could be very simplistic and sum up most of these problems with a 3 letter acronym :-
Mexico's problems are the U.S.A.

So it seems we will have to wait a few days, possibly as some pundits suggest till Sunday - to learn the name of the next President of the Federation of Mexico. But by now we really ought know how much power he's really going to be able to wield. I suggest Pancho Villa and Zapata would turn in their graves (if they were lucky enough to get them).

I will update in the comments.

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Comments (17 of 17)

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Problem the sixth:

by Paul Baynes

Mon Jul 03, 2006 21:09

* Drugs

Another issue in Mexico is the drugs trade. Not necessarily the fact that drugs are BAD and all that usual mallarkey, but the fact that the US uses drugs as a reason to interfere in Mexican affairs. In fact, the US uses the drug trade to interfere in the affairs of states right across Latin America, particularly in the Andean countries where a lot of cocaine is grown, and in Mexico and the Caribbean, which are the main transit points into the US.

Rhetoric about the drugs trade is used by the US to emphasis security, and become involved militarily in Latin America. All US aid to states in Latin America is dependent on a drug certification programme - the US has to believe that the state in question is fighting the war on drugs in the correct manner before giving aid.

Fighting the war on drugs in the correct manner = Taking a confrontational security-focussed approach.

This basically means lashing the local community out of it bejaysus. It also entails the strengthening of the military, and the reduction of democratic institutional oversight of the activities of security forces. Since a National Security Decision Directive by Ronald Reagan in the 1980s, the US has categorised the illegal drug trade as a national security issue. For one example of the negative impact of this 'securitisation' of the drug issue in Mexico, see the following quote (from http://ciponline.org/facts/edrmx.htm):

"Observers have expressed some concern about the "end use" of equipment and training transferred to Mexico through drawdowns and other programs. Much of this concern was inspired by the misuse of U.S.-provided counternarcotics helicopters to transport troops during the 1994 Chiapas uprising.14 In March 1998 testimony, the GAO [the US General Accounting Office] indicated that:

" 'oversight and accountability of counternarcotics assistance continues to be a problem. We found that embassy records on UH-1H helicopter usage for the civilian law enforcement agencies were incomplete. Additionally, we found that the U.S. military's ability to provide adequate oversight is limited by the end-use monitoring agreement signed by the governments of the United States and Mexico' ".

Funny enough, NAFTA has made trafficking illegal drugs over the border a bit easier... We'll have to wait and see what Mexico's new president's take on the drug trade is...

Yep. true enough bring us to problem the 7th - Corruption.

Tue Jul 04, 2006 01:08

Mexico was ranked joint 65 on the 2005 corruption perception index - whereas Ireland had joint 19th. (the higher the place the worse things are percieved to be)
c/f http://www.indymedia.ie/article/72623
Corruption in Mexico affects the allocation of development funds or tendering of exploitative contracts stretching from mineral resources and Oil as well as the efficacy of the Federal goverment to control Drug cartels in their last smuggling hurdle before the lucrative US market.
Most of the corruption has to do with "bribery" which interestingly enough the World Bank doesn't think "is bad in all circumstances" arguing that the only way to develop certain regions is to use bribery or at least respect the local custom ( an example could be building an airport extension in a forgotten country and ensuring the Othello like squire's lands were sold to build that air-strip on because it "looks right" to the local regime and impresses the poorly educated natives & makes them feel prouder of their boss )

Corruption is like Drugs :- a very difficult to thing to measure, a hard problem to define, which is why I wanted to leave it off the list.............................................but!

I doubt Paul would disagree with me much if we attributed his "6th problem - drugs" and the 7th problem "corruption" to the same catch-all 3 letter acronym for all of Mexico's problems - "U.S.A."

Indeed...

Tue Jul 04, 2006 13:53

In terms of foreign policy in Latin America, one of the central themes for all states has been the relationship with their powerful northern neighbour since the Monroe doctrine in 1823 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monroe_doctrine) and the Roosevelt corollary in 1904 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roosevelt_Corollary_to_the...trine). This marked the US taking the place of the European ‘great powers’ as the dominant force in the region.

So I agree with your conflation of probs 6 & 7 into those three frightening letters.

Regarding corruption, I remember seeing Angel Luis Rivera Agosto, a representative of the Latin American Council of Churches with a very cool name, speaking at a plenary session last year on global trade. The issue of corruption was brought up, and he reminded those present that when people in the West throw up their hands at the problem of corruption in the so-called Third World, they should remember that there is always a Western element to this corruption. Rather than blaming Latin American and African governments for corruption, the West should look at its own role in this. So it’s pertinent that iosaf has mentioned the World Bank’s ambiguous and ambivalent take on bribery.

the Fox news thing popped up last night.

Tue Jul 04, 2006 19:10

As I wrote above, everyone is saying "they won". The penny dropped north of the border and Fox TV decided "it was just like Gore v. Bush". Now we all know Fox TV were the ones who "called that election" by deciding to tell everyone Bush had won.... So it's not surprising that today the USA has declared the conservative candidate won by 300,000 votes with only 98% counted once. I don't know what the spanish for "chad" is........

the BBC doesn't know the spanish for "Chad" either..,

Wed Jul 05, 2006 00:46

So they just fished out an old movie reel picture of a "chad" from the Bush v. Gore election recount in Florida.
1%
Things are getting really really interesting. Even for people whose philosophy doesn't go beyond the Zapatista "other campaign", Marcus launched by declaring that this could be the "last election".
the magic number is 1% that is all the conservative (ex energy minister) has...... but...... the Electoral Commission has announced today that it will recount every vote starting Wednesday 5 / 7 / 06.

& the soft lefty candidate (ex mayor of mexico city) is threatening
* legal action
* street protests
because........ There are a lot of votes missing.
Its quite simple, not all the votes have been counted. Scroll up the screen look at the % figures and the link to the Mexican electoral comission. Lots of ballot papers have gone m-i-s-s-i-n-g. More ballots than the current 1% or estimated 300,000 - 400,000. I suppose we have the USA or more precisely the Bush Clan to thank for this. They made it very 21st century.
How many "too close to call" elections have we had? forgotten Italy??? Of course no-one points out that the majority of Mexicans did not vote for either of the squabbling candidates. That would be democratic.

Bloodsucker of the mexican people

by Madam K

Wed Jul 05, 2006 03:12

Who remembers Carlos Salinas de Gortari ?
Ex-President of Mexico,architect of the North American Free Trade Agreement ? He left the country in disgrace shortly after his brother's arrest in February 1995 for the assassination of Luis Donaldo Colosio, a leader of the Institutional Revolutionary in March 1984.Salinas, along with his new wife, their young daughter, some bodyguards and the assistance of powerful and wealthy Irish friends,began a self-imposed exile in Dublin.
Ireland and Mexico do not have an extradition treaty.
He lead a quiet life in Dalky having entered Ireland on a three month visa,but 12 months later was still enjoying a drink at Conrad`s his favourite watering hole...

News.

by ipsiphi

Wed Jul 05, 2006 03:24

Sub. com. Marcos has described the election as a "fraud" in a radio interview carried by the People's front UNIOS broadcast on 620 AM during the Política de banqueta" programe.

He's dismissed the whole thing as a sham to preserve the regime. (which it is) & he's not just wafflinf off his own bat - he's being a "spokesperson".

if you like listening to his voice ( & many do ) go to this link soon the mp3 will be posted there-
http://enlacezapatista.ezln.org.mx/la-otra-campana/371

or if you read spanish go here
http://barcelona.indymedia.org/newswire/display/265012/...x.php

Of course you would be very dim if you thought Marcos or the EZLN or the global zapatista movement wanted any of the candidates to win, but no-one is going to accept this "Chad" shite. So............
its on to the street oh boyz & grrrrls of Mexico!
a la lucha!

Marcos & EZLN & Zapatistas reject election results. = Its on to the streets now.

Historical sociology

Wed Jul 05, 2006 13:00

Very interesting stuff, Mr. i (& Ms. K).

The following article gives an excellent account of the history of relations between Latin America and the US:
http://www.tni.org/archives/landau/bolivia.htm

To understand any situation in international relations, it is essential to place events in their historical context. The election in Mexico should be seen in this light. This is known as a historical sociology approach...

very socially, ethnically & linguistically diverse federation is Mexico, Paul. UPDATE ON RECOUNT

Wed Jul 05, 2006 19:09

Recount has started, as well as examination of the electoral process last Sunday.

The preliminary stage of the recount has reduced the lead of the conservative Felipe Calderón, from what was suggested to be 1.2% and between 300,000 and 400,000 to 257,532 votes or 0.64%
So its getting tighter already.
Furthermore for other legal challenges (relating to the allegations of misconduct or fraud) it has now been confirmed that of the 130,488 ballot box centres at which 71.3 million Mexicans voted, only 87% were guarded by at least one representative of both main coalition groups.

This reduces the "security" index of the election as stated in the article above of "99.4% correct procedure" by 12.4%. Therefore there may be more than 8 million votes open to closer scrutiny.

Also at least 50,000 ballot centres registered more votes than registered voters.

Thus the whole thing is going to "take some time".

Both sides have declared they won, and have till the 31st of August 2006 to formally lodge their complaints to the Mexican electoral tribunal [Tribunal Electoral del Poder Judicial de la Federación (Trife)] who will publish their decision on the 6th of September. The new president will assume office on the 1st of December.

So far no sings of street demonstrations. The editorials speak of "transparency" that wonderful word which always is used when things get murky. Here's a constant updating page at the main Mexican daily http://www.eluniversal.com.mx/ol_minuto_ele.html

2.6% more for the PRD

by redjade

Thu Jul 06, 2006 00:03

Partial returns from a recount of Sunday's vote gave Lopez Obrador, the former mayor of Mexico City, a lead of about 2.6 percentage points over the ruling party's man Calderon.

Although returns were in from more than half of the polling stations, it was far too soon to predict the final result.

The initial preliminary results earlier this week had given Calderon, a pro-U.S. former energy minister, a lead of 0.6 percent.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060705/ts_nm/mexico_electi...0bQ--

Mexican Election, Florida Style

Thu Jul 06, 2006 02:15

Bush Team Helps Ruling Party “Floridize” Mexican Presidential Election
by Greg Palast

Most provocative is the contractor to whom this no-bid contract was handed: ChoicePoint Inc. of Alpharetta, Georgia. ChoicePoint is the database company that created a list for Governor Jeb Bush of Florida of voters to scrub from voter rolls before the 2000 election. ChoicePoint’s list (94,000 names in all) contained few felons. Most of those on the list were guilty of no crime except Voting While Black. The disenfranchisement of these voters cost Al Gore the presidency.

Having chosen our President for us, our President’s men chose ChoicePoin for this sweet War on Terror database gathering. The use of the Venezuela’s and Mexico’s voter registry files to fight terror is not visible — but the use of the lists to manipulate elections is as obvious as the make-up on Katherine Harris’ cheeks.

[...]

Foreign — that is, American — interference in political campaigns is a crime. That didn’t stop Team Bush. However, when the theft of its citizen files was discovered, Argentina threatened to arrest ChoicePoint contractors until the company returned the tapes — and Mexico’s attorney general did in fact arrest the ChoicePoint data thieves to avoid his party from looking too much the stooge of its Washington patron. Whether George Bush gave back his copy, no one will say.

{i can't quote the whole article on indymedia - so go read the rest....}

http://www.gregpalast.com/stealing-mexico

36.35% "soft lefty" versus 34.95% "right neoliberal" based on 88.22% computerised recount.

by hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm - iosaf

Thu Jul 06, 2006 04:56

First demonstrations have seen clashes in front of the Electoral Offices, but the "soft lefty" Mr L. Obrador has appealed to people to be calm, coz that makes him look like a statesman.

For what its worth ( an awful lot actually ) the Spanish media are now positioning for complete vote by vote recount.
For what its worth ( quite a bit more than Madrid ) the US media is punditing for a "supreme court" decision................. I wonder is there a Bush croney on the Mexican supreme court?

have a look at this comment title "based on 88.22% computerised recount".
It stinks. Democracy stinks. Thats why almost half the voters didn't vote. We all know its a farce.

We'd have a fairer system if we locked up our old folks in an art gallery and didn't let them out till they blew white smoke through the roof.

There are now 130 pages of updates on the Mexican national daily newspaper
http://www.eluniversal.com.mx/ol_minuto_ele.html

35.33% soft lefty v. 35.85% capitalist right ( difference 0.52% )

Thu Jul 06, 2006 19:27

Something like this tells you lots about the sort of newspapers you get in your kiosk. The Irish papers (Irish times) have now called for Calderon the conservative neo-liberal capitalist NAFTA fan.
The party of L Obrador have brought their case to the tribunals. There are now serious incidents of irregularites. Yesterday ballot papers "appeared". Exactly where they appeared from and where they were since the innocent Mexicans put them in the box last Sunday is a mystery ¿no?
It would almost make you think, "well if dozens of thousands of extra votes can appear on Wednesday, then maybe there are still a few more out there in limbo somewhere?"

So I'm sticking with the "no-one has won the Mexican presidential election line" balanced (to be fair) with "the government has won the election".

Obrado leads a party which seems to have upped its popular support amongst the poor since Sunday.
Calderon leads a party of lawyers.

hmmmmmmmmmmmm.
Who decides who wins elections? poor people on the street or lawyers?

Lets get something straight as well for the Irish Times and its ilk.

There has yet been no vote for vote manual and observed recount.
its a farce.
http://graficos.eluniversal.com.mx/actas/minuto2.htm

Mexico: Bloggers, math geeks analyze vote fraud claims

Sun Jul 09, 2006 01:06

its florida and ohio all over again

in mexico.

go read
http://www.boingboing.net/2006/07/06/mexico_bloggers_ma....html

L Obrador's legal team have submitted 2 videos which they say prove 2 instances of Voter Fraud.

Tue Jul 11, 2006 00:46

there has still been no vote by vote recount, or it appears even a count of all the votes.
The Venezuelan daily (at link) reports one of the videos captures a man placing multiple votes in the ballot box. This means several things - Mr Obrador's lawyers aren't really worried if the man was placing multiple votes for Obrador or Calderon - 2 crimes were "proven" :- casting multiple votes & breaching the secrecy of the ballot.
The words "nose", "spite, "face" & "cut off" come into this.
http://economia.eluniversal.com/2006/07/10/int_ava_10A7...shtml

other excellent coverage in spanish :-
http://www.indymedia.ie/article/69542&comment_limit=0&c...57876

Florida Con Salsa: Investigative Reporter Greg Palast Reports on Voter Fraud in Mexico's Presidentia

by dunk

Wed Jul 12, 2006 19:14

fuspey at yahoo dot co dot uk

very nice and short docu from Investigative Reporter Greg Palast on democracy now

Florida Con Salsa: Investigative Reporter Greg Palast Reports on Voter Fraud in Mexico's Presidential Election:
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/07/12/146201

another country, another vote robbery, same crew invovled as in florida, so blatant, check it out

from guerilla radio in DC, :

Thu Jul 13, 2006 12:18

Stolen election in Mexico will NOT end like Florida or Ohio!
http://radio.indymedia.org/news/2006/07/10485.php

file:
http://radio.indymedia.org/uploads/stolen_election_mexi...0.mp3

It has widely been reported that computers counting ballots and making those tally sheets were preprogrammed to give Calderon an advantage over former Mexico City mayor Obrador no matter what, as polls consistantly showed a slight lead for Obrador.

Since Obrador represents the poor,who are the majority in Mexico, it is no suprise that he would win a free and fair election. Calderon represents the rich and the free traders instead, so he gets US help that makes him a foreign agent.

Disgraced Clinton campaign strategist Dick Morris helped Calderon make those notorious "Chavez" attack ads that a court ruled illegal, and who knows how much other help the US gave Calderon.

Since Obrador has promised to "renegotiate" NAFTA, leading probably to withdrawal from NAFTA, it is not a suprise that the US has intervened to support free trade advocate Calderon instead.

Of course, there is one problem for the free traders in all this-Obrador has done what the Dems never had the guts to do here-called voters into the streets to FIGHT for the right to have their voted counted!

Calderon may well become a "Cauldron" of Revolution as voter's anger spills into the streets of Mexico City.

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