San Francisco Chronicle: Presidential vote too close to call
Post
Presidential vote too close to call, Result delayed - Final count to be released Wednesday, Robert Collier, San Francisco Chronicle, Monday, July 3, 2006
(07-03) 04:00 PDT Mexico City -- Mexico's presidential race was locked in a nail-biting standoff late Sunday between conservative Felipe Calderon and leftist Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, with the results too close to call as the vote count trickled in.
The contest is widely seen as a referendum on the free-market policies carried out over the past six years by President Vicente Fox, who belongs to Calderon's National Action Party, or PAN.
Calderon has pledged to continue this trend and to remain friendly to the United States, while Lopez Obrador of the Democratic Revolutionary Party, or PRD, has promised to spend billions of dollars fighting poverty and to reorient Mexico's relations southward toward the rest of Latin America.
With 30 percent of the votes counted, Calderon had 38.5 percent and Lopez Obrador had 35.7 percent. Roberto Madrazo, of the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, which ruled Mexico from 1929 until Fox's victory in 2000, was in third place with 19.1 percent.
The Federal Electoral Institute, the Mexican agency in charge of balloting, said its so-called "quick count" -- a survey of results from 7,640 polling stations or about 5 percent of the total -- showed the difference between Calderon and Lopez Obrador was within the margin of error. The institute's chief, Luis Ugalde, said final election results would not be released until Wednesday, and he prohibited candidates from declaring victory until then.
The race was the most bitter in Mexican history, with television and radio commercials that exceeded even U.S. standards of negative campaigning. Calderon and Lopez Obrador accused each other of being liars, corrupt and a danger to society. The Federal Election Institute ruled many of those claims to be dishonest and ordered the candidates to cease and desist - with little apparent result.
Exit polls indicated no surprises in local elections, with the PRD and PAN each winning in their respective strongholds. PRD candidate Marcelo Ebrard won the Mexico City mayor's race by a landslide, with about 50 percent of the vote. In Jalisco state, PAN gubernatorial candidate Emilio González won with 46 percent, and in Guanajuato state the PAN's candidate, Juan Manuel Oliva, won with 59 percent.
In contrast to previous years, many international pro-democracy organizations did not send election observers to witness the voting, saying Mexico's Federal Electoral Institute has created a nearly fraud-proof system and has eliminated most previous methods of cheating.
But the old tactics may not have gone away completely, said some of the observers who did witness the vote.
"What I saw goes above and beyond what I've seen in 12 years of observing elections here," said Ted Lewis of Global Exchange, a liberal human-rights group from San Francisco that has sent observer groups to Mexican elections since 1994 and this year has 25 members in Oaxaca, San Luis Potosi and Mexico states.
Lewis said that in Chimalhuacan, a huge working-class suburb of the capital city, he had witnessed apparent coercion by the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, which ran Mexico from 1929 to 2000.
"There was definitely vote-buying going on," he said. "There was a lot of pressure. In one place, they were practically coming to blows."
Lewis said that at one polling place, after cameramen from the Telemundo network arrived and inquired about the alleged wrongdoing, "the PRI people got nervous, got on the phone, and suddenly there were all these state police and helicopters here."
Mexico state, which wraps around the capital city and includes Chimalhuacan, remains one of the PRI's strongholds.
The danger of possible unrest and instability was highlighted by the PRI's national president, Mariano Palacios Alcocer, who appeared after the polls closed and warned the electoral institute not to release its quick count of votes.
The institute "should be extremely cautious and responsible and should not release its quick count prematurely and thus endanger the stability of the nation," Alcocer said. Although the institute said the quick count showed a race too close to call, the agency did not release the actual figures from the survey.
The Calderon campaign has skillfully played on the widespread public nervousness about the chance for instability. Calderon has repeatedly warned that Lopez Obrador is "dangerous" and would throw Mexico into an economic crisis.
At various polling places in Mexico City on Sunday, voters indicated that the worries about Lopez Obrador were hitting home.
Raul Alberto Aznar, a businessman voting in the middle-class Del Valle neighborhood, called Lopez Obrador "a danger to Mexico."
"We are enjoying democracy in Mexico, and Lopez Obrador strikes me as somebody who disrespects the freedoms we now enjoy," said Aznar, who said he voted for Calderon.
Antonio Galindo, 36, a waste management consultant who lives in the city's Condesa neighborhood, said Calderon was the safest choice between the two front-runners. "Calderon represents the change for the better that began with Fox," he said. "Fox has tried to take Mexico and its economy in the right direction, but was blocked at every step of the way by the opposition. I think that Calderon will keep trying to head in the right direction."
But Galindo admitted that the deep election divisions were hitting home and that his family and friends were split on the election. "It's not like in 2000, when everyone voted for change," said Galindo. "Everyone is divided this time around."
Even some working-class voters said the specter of financial instability scared them. Amparo Diaz, who works at a travel agency, said Lopez Obrador's economic platform was reckless, full of plans to spend heavily on social programs without explaining how they would be financed.
"Mexico's needs more investment, more trade. That's what will bring jobs," said Diaz. "I just see Lopez Obrador repeating over and over that he'll fight poverty. But where's his plan?"
Yet the complexity of the country's ideological and cultural fault lines caused even some rich Mexicans to vote for Lopez Obrador.
"The ultra-right, and I think that's what Calderon represents, contradicts the essence of democracy because it's principally concerned with protecting the privileged," said Gustavo de Anda Gomez, an investment risk consultant. "The government's main reason for existing is to work for the benefit of all."
Despite the apparently razor-tight final margins, one clear loser was the Zapatista movement, whose leader, Subcommander Marcos, had called on Mexicans to boycott the vote.
The Zapatistas gained support after their 1994 revolt in southern Chiapas state, especially among liberal intellectuals, but their hard-line rejection of electoral politics has alienated most supporters.
Marcos led a march of several hundred Zapatista supporters through downtown Mexico City to the central Zocalo square on Sunday.
"Our ideas of liberty and justice don't fit in the ballot boxes," said a big banner at the head of the march." Marcos did not speak at the rally, which soon dispersed.
Mexican law limits presidents to one term, and Fox plans to retire to his ranch after the new president takes the oath of office Dec. 1.
More than 40 million people, or about 60 percent of the electorate, were expected to vote. For the first time, millions of Mexicans living in the United States were allowed to vote from abroad, but only 32,632 ballots were actually cast, not an amount that was expected to affect the overall results.
Sunday's vote was also for all members of Congress, including 500 members of the Chamber of Deputies and 128 members of the Senate.
(07-03) 04:00 PDT Mexico City -- Mexico's presidential race was locked in a nail-biting standoff late Sunday between conservative Felipe Calderon and leftist Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, with the results too close to call as the vote count trickled in.
The contest is widely seen as a referendum on the free-market policies carried out over the past six years by President Vicente Fox, who belongs to Calderon's National Action Party, or PAN.
Calderon has pledged to continue this trend and to remain friendly to the United States, while Lopez Obrador of the Democratic Revolutionary Party, or PRD, has promised to spend billions of dollars fighting poverty and to reorient Mexico's relations southward toward the rest of Latin America.
With 30 percent of the votes counted, Calderon had 38.5 percent and Lopez Obrador had 35.7 percent. Roberto Madrazo, of the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, which ruled Mexico from 1929 until Fox's victory in 2000, was in third place with 19.1 percent.
The Federal Electoral Institute, the Mexican agency in charge of balloting, said its so-called "quick count" -- a survey of results from 7,640 polling stations or about 5 percent of the total -- showed the difference between Calderon and Lopez Obrador was within the margin of error. The institute's chief, Luis Ugalde, said final election results would not be released until Wednesday, and he prohibited candidates from declaring victory until then.
The race was the most bitter in Mexican history, with television and radio commercials that exceeded even U.S. standards of negative campaigning. Calderon and Lopez Obrador accused each other of being liars, corrupt and a danger to society. The Federal Election Institute ruled many of those claims to be dishonest and ordered the candidates to cease and desist - with little apparent result.
Exit polls indicated no surprises in local elections, with the PRD and PAN each winning in their respective strongholds. PRD candidate Marcelo Ebrard won the Mexico City mayor's race by a landslide, with about 50 percent of the vote. In Jalisco state, PAN gubernatorial candidate Emilio González won with 46 percent, and in Guanajuato state the PAN's candidate, Juan Manuel Oliva, won with 59 percent.
In contrast to previous years, many international pro-democracy organizations did not send election observers to witness the voting, saying Mexico's Federal Electoral Institute has created a nearly fraud-proof system and has eliminated most previous methods of cheating.
But the old tactics may not have gone away completely, said some of the observers who did witness the vote.
"What I saw goes above and beyond what I've seen in 12 years of observing elections here," said Ted Lewis of Global Exchange, a liberal human-rights group from San Francisco that has sent observer groups to Mexican elections since 1994 and this year has 25 members in Oaxaca, San Luis Potosi and Mexico states.
Lewis said that in Chimalhuacan, a huge working-class suburb of the capital city, he had witnessed apparent coercion by the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, which ran Mexico from 1929 to 2000.
"There was definitely vote-buying going on," he said. "There was a lot of pressure. In one place, they were practically coming to blows."
Lewis said that at one polling place, after cameramen from the Telemundo network arrived and inquired about the alleged wrongdoing, "the PRI people got nervous, got on the phone, and suddenly there were all these state police and helicopters here."
Mexico state, which wraps around the capital city and includes Chimalhuacan, remains one of the PRI's strongholds.
The danger of possible unrest and instability was highlighted by the PRI's national president, Mariano Palacios Alcocer, who appeared after the polls closed and warned the electoral institute not to release its quick count of votes.
The institute "should be extremely cautious and responsible and should not release its quick count prematurely and thus endanger the stability of the nation," Alcocer said. Although the institute said the quick count showed a race too close to call, the agency did not release the actual figures from the survey.
The Calderon campaign has skillfully played on the widespread public nervousness about the chance for instability. Calderon has repeatedly warned that Lopez Obrador is "dangerous" and would throw Mexico into an economic crisis.
At various polling places in Mexico City on Sunday, voters indicated that the worries about Lopez Obrador were hitting home.
Raul Alberto Aznar, a businessman voting in the middle-class Del Valle neighborhood, called Lopez Obrador "a danger to Mexico."
"We are enjoying democracy in Mexico, and Lopez Obrador strikes me as somebody who disrespects the freedoms we now enjoy," said Aznar, who said he voted for Calderon.
Antonio Galindo, 36, a waste management consultant who lives in the city's Condesa neighborhood, said Calderon was the safest choice between the two front-runners. "Calderon represents the change for the better that began with Fox," he said. "Fox has tried to take Mexico and its economy in the right direction, but was blocked at every step of the way by the opposition. I think that Calderon will keep trying to head in the right direction."
But Galindo admitted that the deep election divisions were hitting home and that his family and friends were split on the election. "It's not like in 2000, when everyone voted for change," said Galindo. "Everyone is divided this time around."
Even some working-class voters said the specter of financial instability scared them. Amparo Diaz, who works at a travel agency, said Lopez Obrador's economic platform was reckless, full of plans to spend heavily on social programs without explaining how they would be financed.
"Mexico's needs more investment, more trade. That's what will bring jobs," said Diaz. "I just see Lopez Obrador repeating over and over that he'll fight poverty. But where's his plan?"
Yet the complexity of the country's ideological and cultural fault lines caused even some rich Mexicans to vote for Lopez Obrador.
"The ultra-right, and I think that's what Calderon represents, contradicts the essence of democracy because it's principally concerned with protecting the privileged," said Gustavo de Anda Gomez, an investment risk consultant. "The government's main reason for existing is to work for the benefit of all."
Despite the apparently razor-tight final margins, one clear loser was the Zapatista movement, whose leader, Subcommander Marcos, had called on Mexicans to boycott the vote.
The Zapatistas gained support after their 1994 revolt in southern Chiapas state, especially among liberal intellectuals, but their hard-line rejection of electoral politics has alienated most supporters.
Marcos led a march of several hundred Zapatista supporters through downtown Mexico City to the central Zocalo square on Sunday.
"Our ideas of liberty and justice don't fit in the ballot boxes," said a big banner at the head of the march." Marcos did not speak at the rally, which soon dispersed.
Mexican law limits presidents to one term, and Fox plans to retire to his ranch after the new president takes the oath of office Dec. 1.
More than 40 million people, or about 60 percent of the electorate, were expected to vote. For the first time, millions of Mexicans living in the United States were allowed to vote from abroad, but only 32,632 ballots were actually cast, not an amount that was expected to affect the overall results.
Sunday's vote was also for all members of Congress, including 500 members of the Chamber of Deputies and 128 members of the Senate.
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