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John Ross
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Over half a million people took to the
streets of Mexico City on Saturday to protest the fraudulent
election of Felipe Calderon. Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, the
real winner of the presidential election, told the huge crowd,
"the elections were fraudulent from the start," adding
the incumbent president, Vincente Fox "has betrayed democracy."
The reason Fox and his National
Action Party (PAN) pulled out all the stops to steal the election
is quite simple-they are desperately afraid of the growing class
rebellion by Mexico's poor and oppressed. The campaign slogan
of Lopez Obrador was straight forward: "For the good of
all, the poor first." In a country where almost half the
population lives below the poverty line Lopez Obrador pledged
to provide a stipend to the elderly and health care for the poor.
Millions of jobs will also be created, particularly by undertaking
large construction projects to modernize Mexico's dilapidated
transportation system. He also promised to renegotiate the North
American Free Trade Agreement with the United States, particularly
the clauses that allow the importation of cheap subsidized grains
that undermine Mexico's peasant producers.
More importantly Lopez Obrador
pledged to break up the corrupt economic relationship that exists
between the business class and government bureaucrats. Everyone
in Mexico knows that bribes and kick backs are common place throughout
Mexico as much of the country's wealth is skimmed off at the
expense of the workers and the poor. This system existed under
the previous governments of the Institutional Revolutionary Party,
the PRI. What has made the system particularly insidious under
the PAN is that it, more than the PRI, is the party of an entrenched
business elite. Before becoming president, Vincente Fox himself
built up a huge personal fortune, even serving as the head of
Coca Cola in Mexico. Not only is Lopez Obrador threatening to
break up the system of inside favors and corruption, he is also
proclaiming that the rich will have to pay the income and business
taxes that they routinely avoid.
This evidence of fraud in the
election is overwhelming. Thanks to the Internet the most revealing
details of what happened are being produced by the on-line, dissident
press. As Luis Hernandez Navarro, a senior editor of the Mexican
daily, La Jornada, told me, "the electoral process was rigged
before, during and after the election on July 2." (See his
editorial http://www.jornada.unam.mx/2006/07/04/021a1pol.php
) In addition to Navarro's coverage, the excellent source that
explains the electoral fraud with detailed statistics, documents
and charts is written by Al Giordano in The Narco-News Bulletin.
In his latest article he demonstrates that Lopez Obrador actually
won the presidential election by a million votes. (See http://www.narconews.com/Issue42/article1967.html
)
The proposed changes to the
corrupt political system by Lopez Obrador are reformist, not
revolutionary. They are being demanded by an increasingly restive
populace that is shaking up much of Mexico. The unrest started
in 1994 with the rebellion of the Zapatista National Liberation
Army in Chiapas, Mexico. Since then there have been periodic
outbursts around the country.
In 2002 militant residents
of San Salvador Atenco in the state of Mexico blocked the building
of an international airport. Earlier this year they used machetes,
clubs and Molotov cocktails to disperse police who were trying
to stop 60 flower vendors from setting up their stands in the
neighboring community of Texcoco. Then just weeks before the
presidential election teachers in Oaxaca went on strike and were
joined by the entire population as they shut down the city and
demanded the resignation of the PRI governor of the state.
The sin of Lopez Obrador in
the eyes of the ruling classes is not that he fomented any of
these revolts, but rather that he responds to popular demands
from below. The official candidate of the PAN, Felipe Calderon,
has painted Lopez Obrador as a demonic and messianic figure who
will stop at nothing to take power into his hands. Lopez Obrador
has indeed called for mass demonstrations in the past, but only
when the system has violated the democratic process or overtly
trampled on the poor. In 1995 when fraud occurred in elections
in the state of Tabasco, Lopez Obrador led numerous road caravans
and marches over a period of several months, culminating in a
rally in Mexico City. In 1996 he helped lead a militant coalition
of farmers and fisherman who demanded compensation from state
owned oil wells for damages they suffered from a petroleum spill.
Last year, a million people turned out in the capital when the
Mexican congress tried to knock Lopez Obrador off the presidential
ballot because, as mayor of Mexico City, he violated an obscure
law by building a road to a hospital.
Even some international policy
analysts and editorialists in the foreign press see that there
are real dangers of a social explosion if there is not a recounting
of all the votes as Lopez Obrador is demanding. The national
security team of the Bush administration surely must know that
fraud was committed in Mexico's election, but this did not stop
Bush from calling Felipe Calderon to congratulate him when Mexico's
Federal Electoral Institute announced its rigged results on Thursday.
The ruling class in Mexico, along with its international cohorts,
now find themselves between a rock and a hard place. If the vote
recount is allowed, the fraud and corruption of the Mexican system
will be exposed for the whole world to see. If it does not permit
a fair recount, Mexico could become ungovernable.
Mexico has had two major social
upheavals in its history. One came with the independence movement
in 1810, and the other with the revolution that began in 1910.
The current fraudulent election results could spark Mexico's
next social rebellion, four years before the exact century mark
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