Although it appears that little damage or injury has been reported as a consequence of a 5.9 measured earthquake striking Mexico City and nearby localities yesterday morning, political tremors continue in the as yet unresolved Mexican presidential election, which has seen liberal candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador lead gigantic protests, marches and "civil resistance" in favor of a complete hand recount in an election in which he was said to trail by a mere 0.58% or 244,000 votes out of 42 million.
Since no official results will be announced by the court which has ordered a huge partial recount (12,000 out of 130,000 polling stations) of the original paper ballots, we depend on party statements, but there's certainly some weird, weird stuff going on: see below the fold.
Progressive daily newspaper La Jornada had this pithy opening statement on its front page:
People say that in the voting recount, nothing much is happening. Merely illegally opened sealed ballot packets, altered votes, and negative votes for [liberal candidate Lopez Obrador].
What would it take for something to be happening?
As was diaried yesterday by
mariachi mama, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador
made his own case in a column in the New York Times, which, I believe, will prompt much more writing on the matter, since to so many people nothing is real or significant in the world until it attracts serious coverage from the New York Times.
In party representatives' announcements on the results of the partial recount of the presidential vote (there will be no official results until Monday), the conservative PAN party, whose candidate is barely ahead of its liberal rival, claims validation: only about 25% of polling stations recounted had any irregularities and most of those were minor! they say.
The liberal Por el Bien de Todos ("For the Common Good") coalition claims the partial recount only demonstrates the need for a complete recount: they say that in 60% of officially sealed ballot packets re-opened, 60,000 ballots seem to be missing and another 100,000 have been 'significantly altered.'
Activism has continued, with coalition / recount activists this morning once again occupying toll booths into Mexico City and presumably letting the travelers in for free again like last week.
AP Photo from Milenio
Yesterday for various times the demonstrators blocked the offices of the Treasury (Tax offices) and other government locations.
And in case some people forget why one part of the electoral slogan of the liberal coalition Por el Bien de Todos was "and First the Poor", this statistic in Milenio helpfully reminds us that approximately 8 out of every 10 persons in indigenous communities in Mexico lacks access to health services. According to federal statistics office INEGI, that's nearly 11 million people out of an indigenous community of 13.4 million.
Four out of every ten indigenous person's homes lack running water. NINETY-FIVE PERCENT of the infant mortality rate can be attributed to drinking liquids of questionable safety. 95%. I wonder if 95% of the infant mortality in the US were due to bad water and purchased liquids if we'd wait around forever until the 'free market' decided to let our infants live.
Partial Recount Continues with Contested Results
La Jornada photo of the paper ballot recount in Jalisco (by Arturo Campos Cedillo)
Perception of recount differs party to party
By Kelly Arthur Garrett/The Herald Mexico
El Universal
Sábado 12 de agosto de 2006
Miami Herald, página 1
The recount of about 9 percent of the ballots cast in the July 2 presidential election moved through its third day Friday with the two still-contending candidates offering drastically different interpretations of what it all means
The recount of about 9 percent of the ballots cast in the July 2 presidential election moved through its third day Friday with the two still-contending candidates offering drastically different interpretations of what it all means.
Democratic Revolution Party (PRD) spokesperson Horacio Duarte said information from his party representatives at the 149 recount sites indicates that in 70 percent of the polling stations the recount has revealed discrepancies between the numbers originally entered on the tally sheets and the true vote count.
But Germán Martínez of the National Action Party (PAN) put the number of polling sites with altered vote counts at 25 percent. And those with errors involving five or more votes totaled only 3 percent, he said.
Duarte, who like Martínez is his party´s liaison to the Federal Electoral Institute (IFE), said even his rival´s figures would be significant. "The PAN is saying that the changes aren´t important," Duarte told reporters Friday. "But we have to remember that the difference in the IFE vote count comes to only 1.8 votes per polling station."
He was referring to the uncertified results that put Calderón ahead of the PRD´s Andrés Manuel López Obrador by less than 244,000 votes. There were over 130,000 polling sites used in the election.
The PRD maintains that a complete recount of the votes from all 130,000 would give its candidate the victory, but the Electoral Tribunal charged with certifying the vote count opted for the current partial recount.
The tribunal officials and local judges conducting the recount in 149 voting districts spread across 26 states and Mexico City cannot reveal the results until the information is sent to the tribunal magistrates for review after the work is completed Sunday. Since the media is barred from the recount sites, the unofficial results being made public come from PAN and PRD representatives monitoring the recount. Not surprisingly, their versions conflict.
Martínez on Friday said the two parties were gaining or losing votes equally as a result of the recount. Duarte said the movement of votes was clearly favoring López Obrador, with the PRD candidate registering a net gain equivalent to more than one vote per each voting station being recounted. But, he said, the changes come in clusters so that average could change.
"We don´t have a projection yet," he said. "We´re going to wait for the results from all the polling stations."
The two parties also disagreed sharply on the extent of the irregularities coming to light during the recount process. The PRD based its demand for a full recount on evidence it claims points to intentional manipulation of the vote count in as many as 72,000 polling sites. The discrepancies surfacing from the recount, support their fraud claims, PRD officials say.
"The partial recount that the Electoral Tribunal ordered proves that there was massive, systemic fraud in the presidential election," Duarte said Friday evening. "It´s not about minor arithmetic errors, as the National Action Party and its candidate keep saying. There are hundreds of thousands of false votes and missing votes."
"What we´re seeing is very serious," said Gerardo Fernández Noroña, the PRD´s national press spokesperson.
The PAN´s Martínez scoffed at the notion of fraud, insisting that the discrepancies were the result of human error and in any case haven´t favored either candidate. Said Martínez, "The only fraud that exists is Andrés Manuel López Obrador´s claim that there has been fraud."
When the seven tribunal magistrates review the recount results, they can also examine any possible irregularities and can even annul all the votes from any polling station if the problems are serious enough.
Also next week, the tribunal is expected to begin consideration of additional legal challenges involving more than 36,000 polling stations. Unlike the challenges that led to the partial recount, these seek annulment of all the votes from the impugned sites. Most of these challenges come from the PRD, but the PAN is responsible for almost 5,000 of them.
The liberal PRD party, on its side, is not just claiming that errors were found:
from La Jornada
The [Jalisco] state PRD leader, Gabino Berumen, reported that until last night in Jalisco there were 2,810 votes for Lopez Obrador, which represents an increase in an average 1.5 votes per reopened ballot packet, and this serves as one more element of proof toward seeking a recount in all polling stations.
Among the irregularities that Berumen considers "grave" they demonstrated more than 3,500 ballots marked in the same manner, which they conclude was the work of one person, found in districts 13 & 19.
Going further, the PRD party has now claimed that it is expected a serious change in the overall results:
PRD Party Forsees Change in Results: Through Yesterday 132,206 Votes Altered
- If the Electoral Tribunal annuls the polling stations demonstrating irregularities which they ordered opened, AMLO wins, says coalition
- These are not "minor human errors," as Calderon says, but substantial variations, they claim
hastily translated from La Jornada
The coalition Por el Bien de Todos assured that in the recount of 4,238 ballot packets -- of which 6,566 had been counted through yesterday -- there exist 132,206 "altered" votes, not only because in a bit more than half of the polling stations there were found more votes recorded than paper ballots stored, but because the remainder had been removed [illegally accessed through the seal?].
According to the IFE (Federal Electoral Institute) the margin of votes between Felipe Calderon & Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador is 243,934, in which case the annulment of these polling stations -- as demanded yesterday by Horacio Duarte, representative of the coalition in front of the Electoral Tribunal -- it would give "an important change" in favor of the ex-mayor of Mexico City [AMLO's previous elected position].
There are many more claims, many more perspectives, and news of an entire other subject -- for example, the tensions escalate in the teachers' strike in the southwestern state of Oaxaca.
Below, last farewells are made to the husband of a teacher, shot during a demonstration, although the shooter has not yet to my knowledge been identified.