Recount sought for 'fraudulent' Mexican election

Lawyers for Mexico’s leading leftist presidential candidate were preparing their case yesterday for a ballot-by-ballot recount, alleging that the July 2 election – Mexico’s closest presidential race ever – was marred by fraud and a dirty campaign.

Dozens of reporters were waiting for Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador’s lawyers to arrive and turn over to the nation’s top electoral court evidence backing up the candidate’s allegations, which include claims of computerised manipulation. Three soldiers kept watch, but the scene was calm.

A day earlier, Lopez Obrador held a mammoth rally in Mexico City’s historic centre and called on his followers to help keep his hope alive.

Electoral officials say ruling party candidate Felipe Calderon beat Lopez Obrador by less than 244,000 votes in the July 2 election – or a margin of just 0.6%.

Lopez Obrador isn’t seeking to annul the July 2 election, but to force authorities to conduct a manual recount of all 41 million ballots. He contends some of his votes weren’t counted or were voided without reason.

His claims also include allegations that President Vicente Fox used government funds to support Calderon.

“This was a very irregular election and we are asking that they count vote by vote to legitimise the president-elect,” said Gerardo Fernandez, a spokesman for Lopez Obrador’s Democratic Revolution Party, who was outside the tribunal last night waiting for lawyers to present the legal challenge. “We won’t recognise Calderon’s triumph unless they legitimise the election.”

He said lawyers were late because they were making copies of the allegations, which were 800 pages long.

Fox has denied interfering in the elections, and election monitors from the European Union said they found no irregularities in the vote count.

But fraud allegations strike a sensitive nerve with many Mexicans. They question whether Mexico has overcome decades of institutional corruption and fraud that long favoured the former ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, for 71 years until it lost the presidency to Fox in 2000.

Lopez Obrador has stoked those fears. On Saturday, he accused the respected Federal Electoral Institute, held up as an example to emerging democracies around the world, of being a “pawn of the party of the right”.

Turning to his charges that Fox unfairly aided Calderon, he said the popular president “dedicated himself to attacking us and ended up being a complete traitor of democracy”.

Calderon has said the vote was clean and has taken congratulatory phone calls from US President George Bush and the leaders of Canada, Spain and Colombia, among others – despite Lopez Obrador’s plea for foreign governments to hold off on recognising the result.

European Union monitors also claimed the vote was fair.