By JAMES C. McKINLEY Jr.
New York TimesAugust 29, 2006
MEXICO CITY, Aug. 28 — Felipe Calderón seemed virtually assured of being designated president of Mexico next week after the country’s highest electoral tribunal on Monday threw out legal challenges from his leftist opponent, who claims that widespread fraud warped the results of last month’s national election.
The seven-member tribunal stopped short of officially designating Mr. Calderón, a conservative, president-elect. But it ruled unanimously that the opponent, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, had failed to prove that irregularities in many polling places stemmed from fraud, nor had he proven that the errors affected him more than his opponent.
The judges said in open court on Monday that they had ordered the votes from scores of polling places annulled for irregularities found in a partial recount, but that the final result would not change. They also made it clear they found no evidence of fraud.
“Based on all the annulments that were deemed necessary, all the parties lost a considerable number of votes, but that did not affect the result,” said Magistrate José Alejandro Luna Ramos.
Mr. López Obrador, 53, a former mayor of Mexico City who favors spending more on the poor, has declared he will not accept the ruling, calling it part of a conspiracy to rob him of victory.
Speaking Monday evening in a rainstorm, Mr. López Obrador scoffed at the ruling, called his political opponents criminals and said Mr. Calderón had usurped his rightful victory. “Today the electoral tribunal decided to validate the fraud against the citizens’ will and decided to back the criminals who robbed us of the presidential election,” he said.
“With this decision,” he added, “the constitutional order is broken and the road is opened for an usurper to occupy the presidency through a coup d’état.”
Mr. Calderón, a 44-year-old former energy commissioner from the National Action Party of President Vicente Fox, narrowly won the July 2 presidential election by 243,000 votes out of 41 million ballots, according to the initial official tally. A fiscal and social conservative, he has promised to entice foreign investment through public works and a flat tax.
Speaking to lawmakers in Mexico City, Mr. Calderón said he was pleased that the court’s ruling had confirmed his victory. “Just as important as the result of the tribunal’s ruling,” he said, “is that the citizens know the quality of the election we had, that doubts are cleared away and all the malice that has been sown among the citizens is eliminated.”
The court annulled 81,080 votes for Mr. Calderón and 76,897 for Mr. López Obrador after recounting ballots in about 9 percent of the precincts to satisfy legal challenges. Crossing out those votes gave the leftist candidate a boost of 4,183 votes, far fewer than he needed to catch up, electoral officials said.
The court has until Sept. 6 to issue a final tally and designate the president-elect. The decision cannot be appealed.
Mr. López Obrador has become more and more extreme in his accusations over the last month, saying not only that his opponent stuffed ballot boxes and disposed of votes for Mr. López Obrador, but also that the court itself had been bribed. His supporters have blocked the main avenue through downtown Mexico City for a month and engaged in other acts of civil disobedience.
On Sunday, Mr. López Obrador told a large crowd of supporters that any ruling that put Mr. Calderón in office without recounting all ballots “would be an abuse of the people’s rights, a rupture of the constitutional order and a coup d’état.”
After the court ruled, a small group of demonstrators carried a coffin labeled “Democracy” through the center of town.
Mr. López Obrador has called for a national assembly to be held in the city’s main square, the Plaza de la Constitución, on Sept. 16 to decide the future of his campaign of civil disobedience to “save democracy” and “purify public life.” He has suggested the assembly could name him president of an alternative government.
Leonel Cota Montaño, the national leader of Mr. López Obrador’s party, the Party of the Democratic Revolution, asserted the electoral court seemed to ignore evidence of fraud. “Everything indicates they are going to impose Felipe Calderón on the country,” he said. “Everything indicates these rulings are given on these terms: change whatever, except the final result.”
Using a series of arguments based on mistakes poll workers made in counting and recording ballots, Mr. López Obrador has convinced many of his followers that the government cheated them of victory.
In more than half the 130,000 polling places, he said, the poll workers, who were citizens chosen at random and trained by the government, did a poor job of keeping track of ballots.
In thousands of cases, they recorded that they had received fewer blank ballots in the morning than were found in the ballot boxes at the end of the day, suggesting that extra votes were added. In thousands of others, the ballots cast added to those left over were less than the number of ballots poll workers had received in the morning, suggesting that some ballots were missing.
Federal election officials have said those discrepancies are the result of human errors, even though they surfaced in about 70,000 polling places. To prevent fraud and make the task as simple as possible, they said, poll workers counted ballots once and wrote down numbers in various boxes on a form, rather than trying to reconcile the numbers. Different workers were in charge of counting the ballots received, the ballots cast, the ballots left over and the number of voters. They often made mistakes, officials acknowledged.
Mr. López Obrador’s camp has used the errors, however, to generate doubt. His aides have also pointed out that the Federal Electoral Institute, which organized the voting, has no members from their party because of a legislative deal between the other two major parties. In addition, they have cast a spotlight on a brother-in-law of Mr. Calderón who was awarded contracts to provide the electoral institute with software, hinting he could have erased the leftist candidate’s supporters. Election officials deny this is possible.
While these arguments have convinced many who voted for Mr. López Obrador that there was something fishy about the official count, the judges said the pattern of irregularities affected both parties equally and did not suggest fraud.
Antonio Betancourt contributed reporting from Mexico City for this article.Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company
Por fin sucedió lo que se veía venir, la confrontación en el Palacio Legislativo entre el PAN y el PAN debido a la toma de posesión de Felipe Calderón. Los del PRI solamente se quedaron como el chinito, "milando". También se está quedando mirando la prensa extranjera, viendo como hacen el rídiculo los legisladores mexicanos dejando mal parados al país.
