Leon Krauze writes bout AMLO’s defeat: IN MEXICO, A CANDIDATE POSTPONES DEFEAT. Wait Loss, and starts by describing the caught on tape video that you can watch right here:
while AMLO’s actions after the election have been much different:
López Obrador soon made his intentions clear. Fueled by scattered reports of counting errors and other alleged minor electoral wrongdoing, the PRD’s candidate felt he had been robbed. After supporting such a charismatic campaigner (“I am politically indestructible,” he said repeatedly while on the stump), some of López Obrador’s most ardent supporters have jumped on the man’s conspiratorial bandwagon. Some have even dared to equate the situation with the massive 1988 fraud that brought Carlos Salinas to the presidency. Others in the foreign media have drawn a comparison to the 2000 electoral fiasco in the United States. Both associations are nonsensical: There is no evidence of any widespread electoral wrongdoing and nothing even close to a hanging-chad controversy. Still, tapping into Mexico’s jittery relationship with democracy and the possibility of electoral fraud, López Obrador has decided to challenge the election’s results in the Federal Electoral Tribunal (but not before blaming just about everyone for his defeat: the media, Fox, the IFE, the country’s leading businessmen, his own party’s representatives at the polling stations, and–no joke–Sabritas, a brand of potato chips, which he accuses of embedding a pro-Calderón slogan in its advertising).
It is unlikely that such a move will work. Mexican law doesn’t currently contemplate the possibility of a full recount. And even if, due to an extraordinary decision by the magistrates, such a recount did occur, it is unlikely that López Obrador would be able to overturn the 244,000 vote margin. A gap this substantial could only be overcome by the discovery of a vast fraud, something that, according to Woldenberg, is simply “impossible,” given Mexico’s exemplary system.
If the result is basically unalterable, what is Andrés Manuel López Obrador hoping to gain by the whole scandal? To some, López Obrador’s bet appears to hinge on diminishing Calderón’s legitimacy, thereby hindering Mexico’s governability for the next six years. Tainted by a supposed fraud, a Calderón presidency would not go far, paving the way for a López Obrador return in 2012. Simply put, the PRD’s candidate seems to be gambling with national paralysis for the sake of his own political future. What a curious bet for a self-proclaimed democrat.
Moving on to an unrelated subject: at least according to the LA Times, Nogales, Mexico, feels overrun by migrants: the ones booted by the U.S. Officials say they boost crime, fill shelters and strain services. While the article describes in great length the hardships caused by illegal immigrants returned to their native Mexico by the US Border Patrol, the article doesn’t describe that Mexican authorities have actively encouraged the same people to head North:
- The Mexican government has published and widely circulated a handbook on how to best cross the border illegally.
- The Mexican border patrol has done nothing to prevent incidents like this (hat tip: La Shawn).
- A few months ago France2 news broadcast a report of how the Mexican border police actively helps out and directs undocumented immigrants on how to best avoid the US Border Patrols
The responsibility for the hardship of their own people lies on Mexico’s politicians and ruling class.
(technorati tags AMLO, Mexico, Immigration)
