Electoral
Fraud And Rebellion
In Mexico
By Roger Burbach
11 July, 2006
Countercurrents.org
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.
Roger Burbach is director of the Center for the Study
of the Americas, based in Berkeley, California. One of his most recent
books is The Pinochet Affair: State Terrorism and Global Justice. He
has written extensively on Latin America and is presently working on
a book on the social movements and the new left in the Americas.