Mexico: President Fox puts legislature under siege
Mexican President Vicente Fox had to cancel his final state of the union speech before the country’s Congress September 1, after legislators protested a massive police/military mobilization against anti-government demonstrators by seizing the podium. This is the first time in modern Mexican history that a sitting president has been prevented from addressing the opening session of the legislature on September 1.
Fox provoked the conflict by ordering the deployment of thousands of troops to block a demonstration by supporters of Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, the presidential candidate of the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD), who was declared the loser in the July 2 vote by a narrow margin of 240,000 votes.
The PRD candidate has rejected preliminary rulings of the federal election tribunal in favor of Felipe Calderon, the candidate of Fox’s conservative National Action Party (PAN). The tribunal is expected to declare Calderon the victor officially on September 6, clearing the way for his inauguration as Fox’s successor December 1.
The military occupation, unprecedented in modern Mexican history, opens up a dangerous stage in Mexico’s political and social crisis. The PAN government, through this measure, delivered a message to Lopez Obrador to give up his demands for a recount and accept the decision to declare Calderón the president-elect. This security operation represents a serious warning to the Mexican working class of the government’s intentions to repress economic and social struggles.
Mexico matters because the people and leaders knew election problems were coming and they did something about it. They protested in massive numbers, again and again. The Mexican people are offering the largest resistance to election fraud in modern history. Think of the demonstrations in the Ukraine, Belarus, the Georgia Republic, or any other post election protest. Over a period of 15 days, there were three Assemblies sponsored by Lopez-Obrador and the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD). These demonstrations attract over a million people (in a nation of 100 million). The corporate media tried to downplay the crowd size with Bloomberg News failing to mention a 1.1 million estimate it got on July 16 from police authorities. These are vibrant, involved people who work with their leaders, particularly Presidential candidate Lopez-Obrador, to develop plans and fend off attacks by the ruling party.
Mexico matters because the people and leaders refused to give up when the system failed to give them a real recount. The independent election institute tried to pass off a Calderon victory without investigating the numerous and substantial allegations of election fraud. For example, the institute tried to announce a victory by President Vincente Fox’s hand-picked candidate, Calderon, until an audience member pointed out ballots that they failed to count — at least 2.5 million of them. That type of “error” is rarely an error; rather, it shows bias and intent to deceive. The electoral tribunal resisted but was ultimately pressured into a recount of 9% of the vote. The tribunal then refused to order a total recount of the paper ballots even though it found that 130,000 were either missing or invalid — in only 9% of the precincts! The projected total for 100% of the precincts would be over 1.3 million ballots. Yet the full recount failed to materialize.