Tuesday, July 11, 2006
Stealing elections in Mexico
Julia Willebrand of the International Committee sent out a piece by Stephen Lendman in which he discusses how corporate and family interests helped steal the recent Mexican Presidential election. The full text of the piece is hiding behind the "Read more!" link...
NEWS YOU WON'T FIND ON CNN
Democracy, Mexican Style - Part II
Part I Here
By Stephen Lendman
07/10/06 "Information Clearing House" -- -- There's much happening in Mexico
in the aftermath of the nation's most contentious election ever, but it
began many months before the first vote was cast. The popularity of leftist
opposition candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador of the Party of the
Democratic Revolution (PRD) scared the ruling National Action Party (PAN)
enough to get them to try to deny him the right to run for president in the
election just concluded. In April, 2005, a commission of four members of the
Chamber of Deputies (Mexico's Congress) held there was sufficient cause to
suspect Obrador committed a crime when he ordered the construction of a
service road to a hospital ignoring a judge's order against doing it.
Obrador said he was just widening the road and stopped when he learned of
the court order. The full Chamber ignored his explanation and then voted to
strip him of his government immunity from prosecution so he could be
indicted, have to stand trial and be constitutionally barred from holding or
running for high office. The transparent scheme didn't work because the
people of Mexico wouldn't tolerate it and turned out in mass street protests
to support him.
That mass support succeeded in getting the ruling PAN to back down from its
attempt to keep Obrador off the ballot but not in the shoddy campaign
tactics they decided to use against him. Because of his popularity, Obrador
was a serious candidate who would likely win easily in a fair election. But
there's nothing fair about Mexican politics where the notions of dirty
tricks and hardball tactics could have been invented. From early on in the
campaign, the Mexican corporate media and ruling business-friendly right
wing parties attacked Obrador viciously as an evil twin of Venezuela's Hugo
Chavez, falsely accusing him of receiving campaign funds from the Venezuelan
President and being guilty of corruption during his time as mayor of Mexico
City. The ads also accused him of being a "danger" for Mexico. In addition,
government instigated street violence in an attempt to break a teachers
strike in Oaxaca and to disrupt events in San Salvador Atenco created
tension, stoked fear and were effectively used as political and PR tools to
turn enough of the public against Lopez Obrador to erase his once
insurmountable lead in the polls to a slim one on election day - an
advantage easily overcome with the shenanigans the ruling party had in mind
to use to assure its candidate won.
But Lopez Obrador was lucky PAN officials and their conspiratorial
Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) allies didn't intend for him what
state officials plotted and pulled off against two other noted state
adversaries in the past who paid dearly. General Emiliano Zapata, the
Mexican peasant rebel leader who supported agrarian reform and land
redistribution in the battles of the Mexican Revolution (a Mexican Simon
Bolivar), was assassinated by government troops in 1919. Then in March,
1994, leading opposition candidate Luis Donaldo Colosio met the same fate on
the campaign trail in Tijuana. Obrador survived the shabby scheme to keep
him off the ballot, was able to run as the opposition candidate, and only
paid the price of a defeat at the polls (so far) in an election clearly
stolen from him.
At this point Lopez Obrador is not going gentley "into that good night."
Given the clear election irregularities, he's demanded the ballot boxes be
opened and all votes be recounted manually. He has every right to ask for
that and more with what already is known about the fraud committed against
him. The preliminary vote totals were manipulated to show PAN candidate
Felipe Calderon would be the winner, initially 3 million votes were never
counted and only in hindsight 2.5 million of them were added to the totals,
900,000 supposedly void, blank and annulled ballots were declared null,
discarded and never included in the official totals, 700,000 additional
votes disappeared from missing precincts, thousands of voters were denied
their franchise in strong Obrador precincts and much more.
In addition, it was learned that Felipe Calderon's brother-in-law Diego
Hildebrando Zavala wrote the vote-counting software, and it's already been
hacked. This new discovery is especially disturbing as whoever controls the
Federal Electoral Institute (IFE) computer systems can manipulate the vote
process, control which votes get counted, which ones don't, and what the
final vote tally will be. The opportunity and temptation for fraud was
therefore in the hands of the declared winner's close family member and ally
with every reason to believe he'd take full advantage. Why wouldn't he and
the ruling party as well given the history of Mexican elections and the
underhanded and hardball tactics the country's entrenched power interests
are known to use. They'd never be willing to give up what they've always had
an iron grip on and won't if they can get away with their scheme. But the
way to stop them is with a full, vote-by-vote independently supervised
manual recount and do it before any cast, counted or discared votes are
manipulated or destroyed. That's the only antidote for computer fraud as
well as to be able to salvage and include in the total as many of the known
uncounted and valid discarded votes as possible. It all sounds like Florida,
2000 deja vu all over again, but we know how that one turned out.
Still, Lopez Obrador said he'll contest the election and demand a full
recount. If he follows through on his challenge, he'll have to await a
ruling by the Electoral Tribunal, known as Trife, which has until September
6 to consider his case. The new president takes office on December 1 so it's
possible the electoral challenge will succeed. In the past, Trife has
reversed some local elections including one in Obrador's home district of
Tabasco in 2000, but it's very unlikely to reverse this one given the
overwhelming pressure against it which in Mexico may include real and
intimidating physical threats officials take very seriously.
The people of Mexico may have other ideas though. As many as 500,000 Obrador
supporters (the corporate media lied and reported 100,000) held a mass
protest demonstration against the announced election outcome in Mexico
City's huge Zocalo plaza on July 8 to demand a full recount. The huge crowd
chanted "No to fraud," and "You're not alone," as Lopez Obrador announced
plans for a "national march for democracy" to begin on July 12 in each of
Mexico's 300 election districts, converging in Mexico City on July 16, again
in the Zocalo. He also accused President Fox of violating Mexican law that
stipulates a president can't endorse or campaign for a candidate which the
PAN did by running government sponsored advertisements touting its
achievements. He went on to call President Fox a "traitor to democracy" and
said the "stability of the nation" is at risk if a full vote recount isn't
taken. Mr. Obrador also told an assembled news conference "I am going to
defend our victory. This isn't over." The people of Mexico who support him
certainly hope so.
The July 2 elections were also to elect members of Mexico's Chamber of
Deputies. According to the official IFE count on July 7, the PAN won 206 of
the 500 seats, followed by For the Good of All coalition consisting of the
PRD and smaller Workers Party (PT) and Convergence Party with 160 seats. The
Alliance for Mexico comprised of the PRI and small Green Ecological Party of
Mexico (PVEM) won 121 seats. An incomplete final count in the Senate
projected the PAN with 53 seats, 38 for the PRI coalition, 36 for the PRD
coalition and 1 for PANAL.
Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at
lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. Also visit his blog site at
www.sjlendman.blogspot.com.
NEWS YOU WON'T FIND ON CNN
Democracy, Mexican Style - Part II
Part I Here
By Stephen Lendman
07/10/06 "Information Clearing House" -- -- There's much happening in Mexico
in the aftermath of the nation's most contentious election ever, but it
began many months before the first vote was cast. The popularity of leftist
opposition candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador of the Party of the
Democratic Revolution (PRD) scared the ruling National Action Party (PAN)
enough to get them to try to deny him the right to run for president in the
election just concluded. In April, 2005, a commission of four members of the
Chamber of Deputies (Mexico's Congress) held there was sufficient cause to
suspect Obrador committed a crime when he ordered the construction of a
service road to a hospital ignoring a judge's order against doing it.
Obrador said he was just widening the road and stopped when he learned of
the court order. The full Chamber ignored his explanation and then voted to
strip him of his government immunity from prosecution so he could be
indicted, have to stand trial and be constitutionally barred from holding or
running for high office. The transparent scheme didn't work because the
people of Mexico wouldn't tolerate it and turned out in mass street protests
to support him.
That mass support succeeded in getting the ruling PAN to back down from its
attempt to keep Obrador off the ballot but not in the shoddy campaign
tactics they decided to use against him. Because of his popularity, Obrador
was a serious candidate who would likely win easily in a fair election. But
there's nothing fair about Mexican politics where the notions of dirty
tricks and hardball tactics could have been invented. From early on in the
campaign, the Mexican corporate media and ruling business-friendly right
wing parties attacked Obrador viciously as an evil twin of Venezuela's Hugo
Chavez, falsely accusing him of receiving campaign funds from the Venezuelan
President and being guilty of corruption during his time as mayor of Mexico
City. The ads also accused him of being a "danger" for Mexico. In addition,
government instigated street violence in an attempt to break a teachers
strike in Oaxaca and to disrupt events in San Salvador Atenco created
tension, stoked fear and were effectively used as political and PR tools to
turn enough of the public against Lopez Obrador to erase his once
insurmountable lead in the polls to a slim one on election day - an
advantage easily overcome with the shenanigans the ruling party had in mind
to use to assure its candidate won.
But Lopez Obrador was lucky PAN officials and their conspiratorial
Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) allies didn't intend for him what
state officials plotted and pulled off against two other noted state
adversaries in the past who paid dearly. General Emiliano Zapata, the
Mexican peasant rebel leader who supported agrarian reform and land
redistribution in the battles of the Mexican Revolution (a Mexican Simon
Bolivar), was assassinated by government troops in 1919. Then in March,
1994, leading opposition candidate Luis Donaldo Colosio met the same fate on
the campaign trail in Tijuana. Obrador survived the shabby scheme to keep
him off the ballot, was able to run as the opposition candidate, and only
paid the price of a defeat at the polls (so far) in an election clearly
stolen from him.
At this point Lopez Obrador is not going gentley "into that good night."
Given the clear election irregularities, he's demanded the ballot boxes be
opened and all votes be recounted manually. He has every right to ask for
that and more with what already is known about the fraud committed against
him. The preliminary vote totals were manipulated to show PAN candidate
Felipe Calderon would be the winner, initially 3 million votes were never
counted and only in hindsight 2.5 million of them were added to the totals,
900,000 supposedly void, blank and annulled ballots were declared null,
discarded and never included in the official totals, 700,000 additional
votes disappeared from missing precincts, thousands of voters were denied
their franchise in strong Obrador precincts and much more.
In addition, it was learned that Felipe Calderon's brother-in-law Diego
Hildebrando Zavala wrote the vote-counting software, and it's already been
hacked. This new discovery is especially disturbing as whoever controls the
Federal Electoral Institute (IFE) computer systems can manipulate the vote
process, control which votes get counted, which ones don't, and what the
final vote tally will be. The opportunity and temptation for fraud was
therefore in the hands of the declared winner's close family member and ally
with every reason to believe he'd take full advantage. Why wouldn't he and
the ruling party as well given the history of Mexican elections and the
underhanded and hardball tactics the country's entrenched power interests
are known to use. They'd never be willing to give up what they've always had
an iron grip on and won't if they can get away with their scheme. But the
way to stop them is with a full, vote-by-vote independently supervised
manual recount and do it before any cast, counted or discared votes are
manipulated or destroyed. That's the only antidote for computer fraud as
well as to be able to salvage and include in the total as many of the known
uncounted and valid discarded votes as possible. It all sounds like Florida,
2000 deja vu all over again, but we know how that one turned out.
Still, Lopez Obrador said he'll contest the election and demand a full
recount. If he follows through on his challenge, he'll have to await a
ruling by the Electoral Tribunal, known as Trife, which has until September
6 to consider his case. The new president takes office on December 1 so it's
possible the electoral challenge will succeed. In the past, Trife has
reversed some local elections including one in Obrador's home district of
Tabasco in 2000, but it's very unlikely to reverse this one given the
overwhelming pressure against it which in Mexico may include real and
intimidating physical threats officials take very seriously.
The people of Mexico may have other ideas though. As many as 500,000 Obrador
supporters (the corporate media lied and reported 100,000) held a mass
protest demonstration against the announced election outcome in Mexico
City's huge Zocalo plaza on July 8 to demand a full recount. The huge crowd
chanted "No to fraud," and "You're not alone," as Lopez Obrador announced
plans for a "national march for democracy" to begin on July 12 in each of
Mexico's 300 election districts, converging in Mexico City on July 16, again
in the Zocalo. He also accused President Fox of violating Mexican law that
stipulates a president can't endorse or campaign for a candidate which the
PAN did by running government sponsored advertisements touting its
achievements. He went on to call President Fox a "traitor to democracy" and
said the "stability of the nation" is at risk if a full vote recount isn't
taken. Mr. Obrador also told an assembled news conference "I am going to
defend our victory. This isn't over." The people of Mexico who support him
certainly hope so.
The July 2 elections were also to elect members of Mexico's Chamber of
Deputies. According to the official IFE count on July 7, the PAN won 206 of
the 500 seats, followed by For the Good of All coalition consisting of the
PRD and smaller Workers Party (PT) and Convergence Party with 160 seats. The
Alliance for Mexico comprised of the PRI and small Green Ecological Party of
Mexico (PVEM) won 121 seats. An incomplete final count in the Senate
projected the PAN with 53 seats, 38 for the PRI coalition, 36 for the PRD
coalition and 1 for PANAL.
Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at
lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. Also visit his blog site at
www.sjlendman.blogspot.com.
// posted by Gregg Jocoy @ 3:02 AM 
