For a very chilling analysis of how the recent Mexican Presidential election was stolen by PAN, the conservative ruling party, read (caution: pdf file link) Mexico’s Election Fraud: What the US Media Didn’t Tell You, by Kenneth Anderson in the Nov./Dec. edition of The Humanist.
What happened in Mexico is both an object lesson and a cautionary tale. Let’s hope we don’t have a similar experience in our own elections this November.
No exit polls for individual Congressional races this year:
There isn’t going to be an outcry this year either, and Republicans are going to miraculously maintain control of the House and Senate. Very few people seem to care, maybe our education system has gotten too bad to support a functioning democracy anymore. The media in general has failed us miserably. I despise corporations.
There’s no question but that the news coverage of the election in Mexico has been horrible in the United States. I follow the issue of election integrity, and when I couldn’t find any news about the count and the attendant problems in Mexico, I googled looking for news, and similarly, nothing came up. It was just then that it was in the news about Google censoring news searches in China, and I thought, China?, they are really censoring news here.
And that on top of the major US news sources. I thought Google might pick up Canadian or other world sources of coverage. But what came up was virtually nothing.
A lot of us thought we recognized stuff from the last US elections — never mind the next.
Greg Palast had quite a bit to say about that — but he was the only one out there, as far as I know.
It comes in diferent forms:
The “free media” which we so love in most countires is owned and funded by the indiginous elite or in some cases funded by foreign money. They vigorously and in a totally biased manner support the candidates of the elite. If all the pressure from these brazen propoganda organs looks like it wont work, then there other less subtle ways of insuring “victory”.
Election organisers, election commisions, election courts are packed with cronies of the the ruling elite. This makes the ballot box stuffing or its modern equivalent impossible to overcome.
Demonstrations against election results are fully reported in the west and supported by western governments when the candidate of corporatism loses. When the candidate of capitalism wins the western media turn an almost blind eye. This reporting is not about news or right or wrong or who really won. It is about the corporatist western media supporting the corporatist candidate.
Then of course we shouldnt forget the vast mounts of cash that flow from foreign organizations into the coffers of western favored candidates. In any but the richest societies this money can have a massive effect on electoral outcome.
What happened in Florida 2000 and the subsequent legally tenuous supreme court decision in the country that prides itself on being the greatest democracy on earth (even though its own elections do reach anywhere near international standard) gives justification to any righteous right win candidate anywhere in the world to cheat.
Democracy now stands as a figleaf over the truth of government by selection of the ruling elite. Of course in the US the Dems are allowed to win now and again, but only when there is a huge and obvious anti republican feeling, and of course we should not get carried away as the Dems are part of the ruling elite themselves and are not really going to change anything much.
Of course in the US the Dems are allowed to win now and again
Great post, but I don’t think we have any proof of this claim specifically yet. Remember, Democrats had controlled the House for roughly fifty years before rightfully losing power in 1994. For only being twelve years ago, that was an entirely different age. The current electoral manipulation started with the 2000 election, and each time they get away with it we see cheating on a larger scale next cycle. What have Democrats won since then?
There is no guarantee Democrats are going to be allowed to win anything this year either, and I doubt we will have elections in 2008 because Bush will cancel them due to a terrorist threat or in response to a terrorist attack. Condi already floated the trial balloon two years ago, so you know they have spent alot of time planning for it. It wouldn’t shock me if elections were cancelled this year because of something that happens in the next two weeks. It’s going to be hard rigging so many races otherwise.
I actually feel the Dems will win the house but not by much, and that the senate will stay repub. A kind of swing to the Dems but not by as much as polls suggest as all the 2000 on elections have done. However, I may be wrong. Not long to wait to find out. If I am wrong the elites are willing to go further than even I thought!
Oh I reckon there will be a 2008 election. McPain the repub so beloved of Dems will probably easily beat Hillary (Sexism in modern Amerika aint letting no woman win, and if that dont work theres always the other stuff) unless the repubs are nuts enough to destroy him in the primaries. The senate seats up for grabs in 2008 look good for the repubs. They will hold (or if needed retake the senate). Anyway enough predictions
Perhaps Mr. Anderson correctly charges Fox’s party with illegal tactics aimed at preventing the election of López Obrador. Is he castigating the the American public or the press for inattention to Mexican elections (and Canadian elections, for that matter)?
Almost 36% of the voters voted for Calderón, and a fraction less voted for López Obrador. The remaining votes went to three candidates: Madrazo (22%) Mercado (under 3%) Campa (under 1%), any of which could have made the difference in electing López Obrador. Mr. Anderson did not mention them. More in the Washington Post.
Dr. Jorge Castaneda (Mexico’s former foreign minister to the U.S.) expressed concern about the “revolution” called for by Mexico’s pro-Cuban left:
Something is obviously wrong with Mexico’s electoral, judicial, and political institutions, Dr. Castaneda stated in suggesting a turn-around plan. He noted that the court that ruled against López Obrador was made up of seven judges elected with votes from his own party.
Last week, AP reported, fraud was charged by leftists in the gubernatorial election in Tabasco.
Mr. Anderson settled for depicting the election fraud in terms of class, lamenting that the incumbency of Mexico’s ruling elite “chose power over the people’s choice.” I wish he had reviewed what has changed since Calderón’s election. Given the violence in Tabasco, evidently nothing has been done to assure truly fair elections in the future. Is it for lack of Calderon’s leadership? Or is it that the Democratic Revolution Party now controls a congressional bloc sufficient to stop Calderón’s initiatives?
In response to latanawi’s remarks, let me just say up front that there were definitive space limits on the article that necessarily disallowed discussion of the other candidates. But that does not detract from the overall pattern of electoral fraud that was seen in the vote totals of Obrador and Calderon. Which is to say that other candidates’ vote total demonstrated no patterns that would be considered statistically “odd.”
As the commenter notes, Madrazo came in with around 22% (nationally averaged at 22.26%). One of the arguments put forth for the bizarre behaviour of the vote totals in the graph was that this merely demonstrated that the final precincts counted were Calderon territory — northern Mexican regions. But if this territory went heavily for Calderon, this should have come at the expense of other candidates. But in the case of Madrazo, the PRI candidate, also popular in the northern region, should have also seen an surge in his total. Such tallying behaviour was not seen in Madrazo’s vote total. In fact, all the other candidates’ tallies remained more or less constant throughout the final count, which is the nominal behaviour expected under such final count conditions.
None of any of the speculation offered — that Calderon’s upsurge came from northern precincts — has been backed by any evidence from the IFE. In fact, the IFE has never released the regional tallies.
The commenter apparently wished to believe the tales of miraculous voting behaviour by the Mexican people rather than what is plainly obvious from data: it would not have mattered whether the other candidates had garnered or lost a few percent of the vote one way or the other.
As a former member of the government of Fox, which engaged in a number of illegal actions against Obrador during the campaign, Jorge Casteneda’s opinions about Obrador are, to say the least, suspect. His claim that Obrador did not want a recount is quite incredible. More than incredible, actually. It is wrong. Obrador, and the enormous protests in support of him, continuously demanded a full and transparent recount; the “vota por vota” campaign meant exactly that. Mexican voters never got one. Even The Economist argued that there should be a full recount. If Calderon had truly won a “free and fair election,” as was claimed, this should not have been an issue. The establishment spent far more time denouncing a recount than it would have taken to actually do one.
The electoral battle between Calderon and Obrador essentially was a class election. And I would ask the commenter, where and when are they?
Obrador wanted to renegotiate NAFTA, which has put Mexican farmers on the brink of collapse and many have abandoned their corn fields for migrant work. The US has essentially been dumping its highly subsidized corn on Mexico since NAFTA came into effect. This was one reason Obrador was highly popular with the rural communities of Mexico. As I think I saw one other commenter note, the devastation wrecked by NAFTA is in part responsible for the large increase in illegal immigration to the US. But at odds here is that the revenue sent back to Mexico by illegal immigrants is the second largest source of revenue in Mexico. The Fox and now Calderon governments have no desire to turn off that spigot, which is why they opposed the anti-immigration measures that had been proposed here. Apart from being beholden to the corporations that also benefit from illegal migrant workers in the US, the friendship between the Mexican and US governments is also responsible for the reticence on the part of the White House to enact the kind of anti-immigration measures so demanded by the nominal Republican base.
Kenneth Anderson
where and when are they?
Sorry. That should have read, “aren’t,” as in
where and when aren’t they?