Democracy, Mexican Style

Stephen Lendman

Posted Jul 7, 2006      •Permalink      • Printer-Friendly Version
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Democracy, Mexican Style

by Stephen Lendman

What do these presidential elections all have in
common:  Mexico, 1988, US, 2000, US, 2004, Colombia
and Peru, 2006 and the just concluded Mexican election
on July 2?  In each case, the outcome was “arranged”
and known in advance before voters went to the polls.
They’re what economist and media and social critic
Edward Herman calls “Demonstration Elections” - the
characterization and title he gave his 1980s book
analyzing and documenting sham elections in the
Dominican Republic, El Salvador and Vietnam.
Professor Herman is an expert, and although his book
was written over 20 years ago, it’s clear little has
changed except for the added sophistication gained
since then in the ability of officials to make
elections turn out the way they wish.  The same fraud
occurs in many countries, and Professor Herman might
have included many others besides the ones he chose
but had he done so he’d have had to have written a
book with no end. 

Elections that only appear democratic happen
throughout the developing world wherever the US has a
strategic interest, which these days means everywhere.
But they also happen in at least some developed
countries, most notably the last two US presidential
elections.  We know it thanks to the superb
investigative work of UK based journalist Greg Palast
who analyzed those elections and documented how each
was stolen in his important new book Armed Madhouse.
Palast went on to state his belief that based on
information he’s uncovered the plans are now in place
to steal the 2008 US presidential election, and he
explains how it’ll be done.  It’s in his new book,
reviewed in detail and can be read at
sjlendman.blogspot.com.

With this sort of “democracy” in America, what could
we expect south of the border where longtime Mexico
observer and writer John Ross says the fine art of
election theft was perfected.  It certainly was in
evidence on July 2 as that election just completed
with final results announced on July 6 looked just
like the one held there in 1988 when Cuauhtemoc
Cardinas (son of the country’s last leftist president
from 1932 - 38) ran against the US choice Carlos
Salinas of the ruling Institutional Revolutionary
Party (PRI) that dominated Mexican politics as a
virtual dictatorship for over 70 years until it lost
the 2000 presidential election to current President
Vincente Fox of the National Action Party (PAN).  Both
these parties represent wealth and power so it’s of
little consequence to the US which of them runs the
Mexican political system.

In 1988, Salinas was declared the winner with 51% of
the vote in an election Cardenas clearly won.  To
achieve victory, the PRI never counted the votes from
thousands of voting stations, stole and burned the
contents of selected ballot boxes, falsified voter
tally sheets and falsely claimed computers tabulating
votes had crashed and couldn’t be restored for 10 days
following the election by which time Salinas was
declared the winner.  Following the announcement, few
people believed it, and hundreds of Cardenas’
supporters were killed in political violence opposing
it in street protests over the next few years.

At this time, there’s no way to know what will happen
next following the just-announced final vote count.
After the Federal Electoral Institute (IFE) reported
the final count on July 6 showing ruling PAN
candidate Felipe Calderon with a small but
insurmountable lead, opposition candidate Andres
Manuel Lopez Obrador of the Party of the Democratic
Revolution (PRD) rejected the official count as
“flawed.”  He called on his supporters to take to the
streets in a mass show of strength on July 8 in both
Mexico City’s historic central square as well as
around the country to protest the announced result and
demand a ballot-by-ballot recount.  At present, with
99.91% of votes counted, Calderon was said to have
35.87% of the votes to Obrador’s 35.32%.  But with the
ruling authority in charge of the vote count, a miss,
as they say, is as good as a mile, and that one-half
percent difference is more than enough to likely
assure another election theft.

Why? In claiming he won the Sunday election, Lopez
Obrador cited many clear irregularities including
manipulating preliminary vote totals, initially never
counting 3 millions votes and then in hindsight only
counting 2.5 million of them, ignoring 900,000
supposed void, blank and annulled ballots declared
null, discarded and never included in the official
totals, also never counting over 700,000 additional
votes from missing precincts, denying the right to
vote to many voters in strong Obrador precincts, and
much more.  As a result, Obrador announced “We have
decided to challenge the election process and to ask
the Electoral Court of the judicial branch of the
federation for a recount of the votes because we
cannot accept the results” officially announced by the
IFE.  Obrador said he will ask that the ballot boxes
be opened and all votes be recounted.  Campaign
advisor Federico Arreola added “Building a democracy
has cost a lot in this country and we are not going to
give it up easily.  There is no reason for Lopez
Obrador to back out or defend a system that he doesn’t
belong to.”  He might have also added there’s no
reason to accept an election result contrary to the
voice of the Mexican people that no doubt will show
they spoke for Mr. Obrador as their president and not
Felipe Calderon if an honest tabulation of votes is
made.

The procedure going forward now is that the Federal
Electoral Institute will submit the final vote count
to the Electoral Tribunal for approval on Sunday, July
9.  Lopez Obrador then has four days to present his
case for a recount.  The Tribunal, known as Trife,
then has until September 6 to issue a ruling.  The new
president takes office on December 1 so it’s possible
the electoral challenge could change the result as now
known.  Trife has in the past reversed some local
elections, but it’s very unlikely it will reverse this
one given the overwhelming pressure on it which in
Mexico may include real and intimidating physical
threats officials take seriously based on past
history.  Also, according to Mexico expert George
Grayson of the US College of William & Mary, Virginia,
the rules for the Tribunal’s decision are vague -
“It’s going to be somewhat like the US election in
2000, where you have the Supreme Court justices voting
without clear guidelines.”  If Grayson is right, look
for lots of commotion and probable violence ahead but
in the end the people of Mexico will again be denied
their democratic right to elect the president of their
choice - just the way it now is in the US.  So much
for democracy.  In Mexico it’s democracy, Mexican
style which is the same way it works for their
dominant northern neighbor - none at all.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at
.(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)  Also visit his blog
site at sjlendman.blogspot.com

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