MEXICO: Left-wing presidential candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador rejects ruling of Mexico's top electoral court

Left-wing presidential candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador rejected on Monday (August 28) the ruling of Mexico's top electoral court, which threw out allegations of massive fraud in last month's presidential election. With the ruling, the court handed almost certain victory to conservative candidate Felipe Calderon. The seven judges voted unanimously to reject almost all the legal complaints by left-wing candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, who said he was robbed of victory in the July 2 vote. The leftist, who has vowed to make Mexico ungovernable if Calderon becomes president, refused to accept the ruling. Outgoing President Vicente Fox has been relatively quiet throughout the post-election developments, but following the ruling, chided Lopez Obrador. "We cannot allow personal ambitions to put at risk the most valuable thing that the Mexican people have built - our laws and institutions. We should close the way to those who intend to put the future of Mexico off-track, to those who look to return to the past, to those who are outside of reality, to those who try to survive politically with threats and chants," Fox said. The court stopped short of formally naming Calderon the winner, but reported only marginal changes after examining the results of a partial recount and throwing out more than 230,000 ballots because of voting irregularities. The initial result showed Calderon, a former energy minister from the ruling National Action Party, won the election by 244,000 votes, or just 0.58 of a percentage point. Lopez Obrador says there were serious irregularities at more than half the polling stations. He has repeatedly demanded a recount of all 41 million votes cast and said Monday's ruling was "offensive and unacceptable for millions of Mexicans." "The official computation given by the Electoral Tribunal of Judicial Power of the Federation, which intends to legalise the fraud committed on July 2, 2006, is not recognised. Second, the usurpation is rejected and Mr. Felipe Calderon Hinojosa is not recognised as the President of the Republic," he told some 2,000 followers in the main Zocalo square. Judges scrapped the results from hundreds of polling stations where major irregularities were confirmed, but it made little difference, cutting out 81,080 votes for Calderon and 76,897 for Lopez Obrador. Court president Leonel Castillo said Lopez Obrador's claims of huge fraud were "completely unfounded." The judges, whose rulings are final and cannot be appealed, must still rule on whether the entire election was fair and formally declare a president-elect by September 6, but that is widely seen as a formality. If Calderon's victory is confirmed by the court, Lopez Obrador says, he will lead a civil resistance movement against his rival or set up some kind of parallel government.

ITN Source | August 29, 2006

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