Reuters: Orbrador claims election recount proves fraud

Mexico leftist claims election recount proves fraud

by Frank Jack Daniel | Reuters | August 11, 2006

MEXICO CITY -- Mexico's opposition leader said on Friday a partial recount of votes from the presidential election he narrowly lost has shown so many errors that the top electoral court will have to declare him president-elect.

Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, the leftist who claims he was robbed in the July 2 election, said the recount of 9 percent of ballot boxes was only half complete but inconsistencies from the original tallies already topped 100,000 votes.

Conservative candidate Felipe Calderon won by 244,000 votes, or 0.58 of a percentage point, and his ruling party says the recounts are showing only minor changes in the results.

But Lopez Obrador, a fiery former mayor of Mexico City, said more than 40,000 votes had surfaced inside some ballot boxes and 60,000 disappeared from others.

He wants results annulled at those polling stations with the biggest irregularities. Many of them are in areas where Calderon won convincingly.

"What happens if the court applies the law and annuls those polling stations with grave irregularities? Well, the result is different," Lopez Obrador told thousands of supporters in Mexico City's vast Zocalo square on Friday night.

"So even with their own numbers ... they have to recognize that we won the presidency," he said.

Lopez Obrador's supporters have crippled central Mexico City for the past 12 days by setting up camps in the Zocalo and on the main boulevard that runs through its business district.

Their campaign also has included blockading the stock market building, the headquarters of international banks and government offices, as well as throwing open highway toll gates. They blocked access to Mexico's main tax office on Friday.

CALDERON WAITS

Calderon insists the vote was clean and believes the electoral court will soon name him president-elect. He called on Friday for an end to the marches.

"Mexico will not advance with handouts, with tricks or with tension," he told a meeting of factory owners. "Mexico will advance with the work of all Mexicans. Let's get to work."

The protests were stepped up after the electoral court last week ordered the partial recount of votes, rather than the full count being demanded by Lopez Obrador.

The recounts must be completed by Sunday. The court is then expected to decide whether or not to annul some results and order thousands more ballot boxes reopened.

Lopez Obrador warned he would not give up his fight even if the electoral court rules against him, while senior aides pressured the court to annul some results.

"These arithmetical inconsistencies are are emphatic proof of fraud," said Horacio Duarte, a senior aide to the leftist.

Saying his street protests were in the tradition of peaceful civil resistance, Lopez Obrador called on foreigners to press for a recount of all 41 million votes.

"In the spirit of Gandhi and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., we seek to make our voices heard," he wrote in Friday's New York Times.

Mexico's financial markets fear a long-running political crisis but have so far shrugged off the street demonstrations.

The peso currency rose 0.75 percent on Friday, buoyed by news that Mexico will prepay $9 billion of debt with international lenders. The stock market was up 1.13 percent.