Thread: Election protesters block bridges

http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/mexico ... 4d62b.html

Election protesters block bridges

Web Posted: 08/04/2006 11:55 PM CDT

Mariano Castillo
Express-News Border Bureau

MATAMOROS, Mexico — Presidential runner-up Andrés Manuel López Obrador's call for civil disobedience reached the border Friday in a string of protests at international bridges in Nuevo Laredo, Reynosa and here.

In Matamoros, a group of about 100 blocked a city street that leads to the Veterans International Bridge at Los Tomates and into Brownsville.

"We're here because we are sure that López Obrador won," Rommel Delgado, a 23-year-old teacher, said over the horns of miffed truckers and drivers.

Civil unrest here and in other parts of the country, most notably Mexico City, is rooted in the historically close results of the July 2 presidential election.

López Obrador, of the Democratic Revolution Party, or PRD, once was the odds-on favorite to inherit the Los Pinos presidential palace. But Felipe Calderón of the National Action Party, or PAN, had a late surge that gave him a victory of less than 1 percent.

López Obrador, who hasn't conceded defeat, and the PRD initially reacted calmly at the close loss, but in the following weeks have upped the rhetoric alleging election fraud.

The small group of protesters pulled a vinyl party streamer across the street as transit police watched.

It was 5:05 p.m. when they brought traffic to a halt.

"Unfortunately, this is the only way to get the government to pay attention to us," Delgado said.

Unlike most PRD demonstrations, the protesters didn't wear the party's trademark yellow shirts. They waved López Obrador campaign signs and simple black-and-white poster boards with slogans like "Stop Electoral Fraud."

The bridge protests were the latest manifestation of López Obrador's recent call for civil disobedience to pressure the federal electoral tribunal to do a ballot-by-ballot recount.

From his perch inside an 18-wheeler, Everando Guajardo appeared exasperated by the roadblock.

"Why don't they go in front of Congress?" he asked. "Why do they come mess with those of us who are just trying to make it through a work day?"

Guajardo was upset that his trailer of cotton would not reach the Port of Brownsville on time.

"The only thing we demand is transparency," said Francisco Chavira, a Nuevo Laredo councilman who helped organize the protest there.

The idea for the protests was hatched by state-level PRD officials and executed by local party leaders, Chavira said.

Matamoros was the only place where an international bridge was blocked. In Reynosa and Nuevo Laredo, the events were limited to the foot of the bridges.

Two federal police officers stood between the protesters and the bridge in Matamoros, watching.

"They have the right to protest," said officer Francisco Hernandez Rocha. The group technically was blocking a city street, so the feds couldn't do anything.

Some of the blocked drivers shouted expletives at the group, while others gave a thumbs up and turned their vehicles around.

Inside a white van, Jose Luis Gonzalez was afraid of missing the chance to visit his dad at a Brownsville hospital and decided to drive right through the protesters, even as they massed in front of this car, yelling: "Break his window! Break his window!"

Other daring drivers followed his example and the blockade was broken by 5:20 p.m.

"This is just a taste of what's coming," Jorge de la Rosa, the protest organizer said. "Next time we will block it for 24-48 hours."

Their request for a recount has been denied.

I imagine that their reaction and action to this news will be similar to what we will have to look forward to here in the U.S. should their demands for immediate amnesty not be met.

Actually they are having a partial recount, and not a full recount.

http://www.montereyherald.com

Posted on Sat, Aug. 05, 2006


Judges order limited recount of Mexican presidential ballots


By Colin McMahon

Chicago Tribune

(MCT)

MEXICO CITY - Rejecting the principal demand of the leftist candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, Mexico's highest electoral court ordered Saturday only a limited recount of votes in the disputed July 2 race for president.

Reaction was fierce and swift. Outside the tribunal building, Lopez Obrador supporters called the judges "rats," "traitors" and "sell-outs." They vowed to expand protests that have paralyzed downtown Mexico City. And one party leader warned ominously that the tenor of the demonstrations might change.

"We have been peaceful, but now there is a risk," said Emilio Serrano Jimenez, a Mexico City congressman from the Democratic Revolutionary Party. "This is putting in jeopardy the peaceful stability of the country."

Lopez Obrador narrowly lost to the conservative Felipe Calderon in a bitter, expensive election that exposed Mexico's deep ideological and regional differences.

But the popular ex-mayor of Mexico City refused to accept the official results, charging that fraud, conspiracies and mistakes gave Calderon the victory.

Both candidates appealed to the seven electoral judges, who are the highest paid public servants in Mexico and whose decisions cannot be appealed.

Lopez Obrador sought a recount, "vote by vote, precinct by precinct." Calderon asked the court to confirm his victory.

Instead, the court unanimously found ground in-between.

It rejected the arguments of Lopez Obrador's coalition that every ballot box in all 300 electoral districts must be opened and reviewed because the whole election was tainted by, among other things, favoritism on the part of federal authorities.

The court decided instead that it would look only at those districts in which specific challenges were made. It reviewed those complaints, the judges said, and decided they were valid enough to warrant a recount in 149 electoral districts spread out across all but six states.

While Lopez Obrador's lawyers argued that they had documented irregularities in more than half of Mexico's 130,000 precincts, the court ordered a recount in fewer than 12,000. That is about 9 percent of the total.

"I am absolutely in favor of this decision," said Luis Felipe Cruz Lesbros, a citizen electoral monitor from the state of Queretaro who came to hear the court's ruling Saturday. "The judges are correcting the errors that were made, in those cases where there were challenges. And errors were made."

The court did not specify how many ballots would be at stake. But if turnout at the targeted precincts was in line with turnout elsewhere, nearly 3.8 million votes might be recounted.

Calderon won by fewer than 244,000 votes out of nearly 42 million cast, according to official figures.

Officials from Calderon's National Action Party, known as the PAN, said they accepted the court's decision. They expressed confidence that the recount, which is to start this week and be finished by Aug. 14, would confirm Calderon's victory.

German Martinez, who represented Calderon and the National Action Party before federal electoral authorities, urged Lopez Obrador to respect the ruling.

"There are no good votes or bad votes for the various parties," Martinez said at a news conference. "On the part of the PAN, on the part of the presidential candidate Felipe Calderon, there is a sincere desire for dialogue."

The party that finished third, the once-dominant Institutional Revolutionary Party, called the ruling correct and logical.

But the reaction awaited most fervently, and anxiously, was that of Lopez Obrador. And that would not come until evening.

Lopez Obrador left a protest camp in downtown Mexico City a few hours after the court's nationally televised vote. He planned to address supporters at 7 p.m. in the capital's historic Zocalo square, officials said.

Lopez Obrador can bring hundreds of thousands of supporters into the streets. Some of them have expressed eagerness to expand their sit-ins, marches and road closings into more disruptive protests. One threat that surfaced this week was to block Mexico City's airport, and on Saturday federal officials dispatched scores more police there to support beefed-up security.

Supporters such as Maria Hernandez were awaiting Lopez Obrador's instructions. But they made it clear just minutes after the court's ruling that they had no intention of accepting it.

"We feel like animals, like wounded animals," said Hernandez, a leader of a pro-Lopez Obrador group called The Women's Net. "We thought that there still might be a tiny, tiny bit of credibility left, not in the institutions, but in these judges here.

"We elected a person who could be president, and they are mocking us," she said. "You need to be blind to not see the evidence. But we are not blind. We are not deaf. We are not going to let this happen."