Tomorrow is the day that the Electoral Court of the Federal Judiciary (TEPJF) will finally officially name Felipe Calderón president-elect. Honestly, it is not surprising, last week TEPJF had ruled that Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) had failed to prove that the irregularities in many of the polling places did not stem from fraud, nor had he successfully demonstrated that the errors affected him more than his opponent.
AMLO has already stated that he will never recognize Calderón’s victory and has vowed to create a parallel government, which he and his supports are already drafting up their new constitution for Mexico.
“We don’t want cosmetic changes,” López Obrador told thousands gathered in Mexico City’s main plaza, the Zócalo, where he has been sleeping in a tent for five weeks to protest the July 2 presidential elections.
x-posted on Para Justicia y Libertad
AMLO and the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) won a major victory and struck a blow to PAN on Sept 1 when PRD legislators stopped President Vicente Fox from giving his final state-of- the-nation speech. And building from this momentous victory, the same legislators are now planning to stop Calderón from being sworn in on Dec. 1. It must be noted that the event that occurred on Sept 1 will added to one many of Fox’s list of first:
- First opposition party president after 71 years of rule by the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI);
- Mexico’s first-ever businessman president;
- First President whose party did not have majority in either the Chamber of Deputies or the Senate; and
- Now first president to have failed to deliver the annual speech to Congress
Although the PRD is celebrating from their symbolic victory, Fox may just have the last laugh while at the same time embarrassing the country he served. So who is this sly Fox who just threw Mexico for a loop.
It was believed that Vicente Fox Quesada, the second of nine children, was born in Mexico City on July 2, 1942 to José Luis Fox and Mercedes Quesada. But it was recently discovered by La Jornada (via Charles at Mercury Rising) that Fox is not a naturalized a Mexican citizen and probably was born in Clevand, Ohio, which is a direct violation of Article 82 of Mexico’s Constitution and adding insult to injury, he is a US citizen. Last week, a request was made at the Interior Ministry asking official proof of Vicente Fox Quesada (Fox y Quezada, official last name) citizenship.
A document discovered in the Civil Registry of Guanajuato shows that the father of President Fox, José Luis Fox Pont, was an American citizen and maintained American citizenship for his son. La Jornada also discovered Fox also violated the nationality requirement while serving as Governor of Guanajuato after former President Carlos Salinas de Gortari (1988-1994) revising the Constitutional requirement that opened the electoral doors to Vicente Fox. The original requirement stated that all candidates had to be born to parents of Mexican nationality; the new requirement only one parent has to be of Mexican nationality. He is still disqualified him because his mother, Mercedes Quesada, was a citizen of Spain.
Tensions are definitely are running high in Mexico. One of the PAN latest movies to replicate itself like the US, PAN party members are suggesting that all members of PRD and the PRD party itself be banned. Once again going back to the one-party system, instead of the PRI, it is now PAN. Sure there are several parties, however, with all the alliances that have taken place during the first day in Mexico’s congressional session, they are non-existent, might as well view them as PAN-lite.
One story that has been buzzing in the small Mexico Crisis blogosphere (Via CorrenteWire; dkos diariest, El Cid and Charles of Mercury Rising) is the latest study conducted by Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR), which they found:
The Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) has found a significant loss of votes for PAN presidential candidate Felipe Calderón in a sample of recounted ballots.
Adding up the numbers for 1,706 ballot boxes (casillas) shows a loss of 1,362 votes for Felipe Calderón. Andrés Manuel López Obrador of the PBT shows a gain of 77 votes.
“This is inexplicably one-sided, with Calderón losing votes but López Obrador not losing any,” said CEPR Co-Director Mark Weisbrot. “It is also a significant percentage of votes in an election this close.”
*Last Monday the TEPJF released the results of its annulment of 237,736 votes; many press accounts mistakenly reported these numbers as the results of the recount, which they were not. The ballot boxes where votes were annulled are not the same as those which were recounted.
This is a very important piece of information. When I wrote about the annullment I too made this mistake. I realized why the numbers did not make sense to me once I saw this post by Charles at Mercury Rising.
A bizarre explanation of how the electoral court reached its verdict, from a program called Con Elisa in Mexico City: If a recount would not change the victor in a particular precinct, the precinct was not annulled. So, if Calderon had 250 votes in a precinct and Obrador had 100 votes and it was discovered that 100 votes were fraudulent, the precinct result would stand. The law would seem to require that the precinct be annulled.
Another source, Garras de Paco Garrido seems to have confirmed that this bizarre logic was used. This purports to be an actual copy of the judicial ruling for the complaint for district 03 of Querétaro SUP-JIN-21/2006 [PDF]… Garras says (paraphrase):
in district 03, they recounted 59 precincts and only in 9 did they rectify the results. Despite the inconsistencies, the judges only annulled two precincts. Under the standards of the TEPFJ, 38 precincts had results that didn’t square, butthe court said
In these precincts, there was some difference between the figures of the basic results, but the difference was smaller than that obtained between the candidates in first and second place in that precinct.
If there was ever need of proof that the events that are currently unfolding resemble the 2000 US Presidential election, this would be it; where as, the US Supreme Court also had to manufacture legal loopholes favoring Dudya. During the 2000 Presidential election the US Supreme Court manufacture a deadline, where they had no choice but to rule against a recount the votes because the time limit had already expired which would have warrented a recount. In Mexico’s case, the reason TEPJF decided toss out whole precincts – where it was undeniably evident that fraud took place (ballot stuffing, destroying the ballots, etc) – was only to confirm the results of original election result instead of confirming massive fraud occurred during the election. In other words, as theBhc points out in the comments section,
the court is saying they will only use the recount to confirm the result. In cases were the recount is discrepant with the result, then the whole presicent is tossed out and ignored.
Thanks theBhc and Charles for pointing this out.
Mexican journalist and anti-AMLO, Lopez Doriga (via dkos participant PatriciaVa), host of TV newscast for Televisa reported, based on his sources, that the TEPJF is divided 4 to 3, and will issue a divided opinion, 4 to 3, in favor of Calderon. According to Doriga, there are 3 justices who would like to annul the Election.
Es la estrategia, cuando en su primer círculo mantienen la esperanza de que prospere la demanda de anulación, proyecto final que ha dividido a los magistrados del Tribunal que anoche se encontraban en un apretado 4-3 a favor de la validez cuando buscan construir una salida unánime.
Lo cierto es que lo que suceda hoy, dentro y fuera del Congreso, influirá en los tonos y tiempos de su movimiento, pero también podría marcar los de la última etapa de la Presidencia de Fox y, de salirse de control, repercutir hasta en el fallo judicial y la transición a la próxima Presidencia.
Once again confirmimg what was reported by People’s Weekly World and Salvador García Soto‘s op-ed piece. According Soto the 4 judges who will rule in favor of Felipe Calderón Hinojosa are: Alejandro Luna Ramos, Eloy Fuentes Cerda, Alfonsina Berta Navarro y Mauro Miguel Reyes Zapata.
The current crisis in Mexico can best be captured by a well-known phrase attributed to the former Mexican dictator Porfirio Díaz, “Poor Mexico, so far from God and so near to the United States.”