BBC : Mexico court rejects fraud claims

Mexico court rejects fraud claims

BBC News | August 28, 2006

Mexico's top electoral court has rejected claims July's presidential election was riddled with fraud.

The court decided not to order a full recount of votes from the disputed election, as demanded by leftist candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador.

Mr Lopez Obrador narrowly lost the election according to the official count. He said the ballot was rigged.

Correspondents say the court is now almost certain to make conservative candidate Felipe Calderon the winner.

Mr Lopez Obrador has warned of a campaign of protests against a Calderon government.

'Parallel government'

Mr Lopez Obrador has led mass protests demanding a recount of all 41m ballots cast in July's election.

Mr Lopez Obrador's campaign had filed complaints at around 50,000 polling stations, but the court ordered a recount at just 11,839 of them - about 9% of the national total.

The seven judges decided there was no massive fraud and Mr Calderon had attracted a majority of votes.

The judges said there were only marginal changes to the original results because of recounts and annulments.

They said that all parties lost a considerable amount of votes in the rechecking of ballots, but that did not affect the overall result.

Correspondents say the verdict means that legally and constitutionally Mr Lopez Obrador's fight to become president has come to an end.

The judges' decision is final and there are no appeals.

A spokesman for Mr Lopez Obrador's Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) said there would be no comment until Mr Lopez Obrador makes a statement in a few hours' time.

There had been no immediate response from Mr Calderon, who has already said he won fairly.

The ruling clears the way for Mr Calderon to be declared president-elect - but Mexico's political crisis is not yet over, the BBC's Duncan Kennedy reports.

Mr Lopez Obrador has spoken of forming a parallel government to fight what he calls this electoral injustice.

Our correspondent says that is likely to mean a continuation of the massive street protests that have blocked much of the capital during the past month.