Mexico's bad loser

A demagogue prepared to hold the nation to ransom

The Times
Leading Articles
August 09, 2006

Mexico has a long history of electoral fraud and manipulation. The rules governing the national elections held on July 2 were painstakingly laid down to prevent history repeating itself.

Mexican law now guarantees the independence of the electoral process by a variety of means. Polling stations are operated by more than a million citizens selected at random, as they would be in this country for jury service, backed by 1,800 independent district advisers. In case of dispute, there is full right of petition to the Federal Electoral Tribunal of seven judges, appointed with all-party consensus, empowered to investigate, order recounts and to declare on the validity of the final result. Few countries can boast such meticulous safeguards.

On July 2, 970,000 representatives of all political parties, 25,000 professional monitors and 639 international observers from the EU and elsewhere watched the casting and counting of ballots. Overwhelmingly, they judged the elections to have been fair and transparent. Only when the final count showed that the populist Andrés Manuel López Obrador had, contrary to expectations, lost the presidential race by a mere 0.58 per cent margin, did he and his Democratic Revolutionary Party (PRD) cry foul.

Señor López Obrador was entirely within his rights to demand recounts where there were indications of irregularities — however implausible are the party’s claims that these affected 50,000 out of 130,000 polling stations and even though he has signally failed to back his allegations with evidence. Given the polarisation of the vote along class and regional lines, the tight result and the demagogic style of his campaign, the protest rallies he called immediately after the vote were no surprise. But Señor López Obrador’s conduct since then has become indefensible, revealing him as a man obsessed with power and contemp- tuous of the very laws and institutions that defend democratic rights.

For the past ten days he has paralysed Mexico City with a mass sit-in to demand a total recount, including the 70 districts where his party never challenged the results. This would be just another means of extending his illegal campaign and giving it a legal gloss. In the same breath, he has said that he will never concede defeat. Last Saturday, when the Federal Electoral Tribunal announced a partial recount in a cross-sample of precincts that begins today, his supporters besieged its premises and he denounced its judges, persons of unquestioned integrity, as “rats” and “traitors”. He has hounded members of his own party who dared to say that elections in their precincts were clean. Although the sit-ins have been peaceful so far, he has hinted that if justice does not give him victory, “street justice” will take over. This is the politics of intimidation.

The judges must not be intimidated. If the partial recount casts doubt on the result, it should be expanded. If not, they must stand their ground. This man has proved his willingness to put the nation’s stability at risk. He has also proved that he is not qualified to be Mexico’s leader.