Mexican Presidential Election Fraud
Last Sunday, more than 40 million mexicans voted for president, both congresses, and in some states for governors. There was (once again) a fraud in the election, in favour of the current president's party, the right-wing (and sometimes extremist) PAN. Felipe Calderón was its presidential candidate. He was busy in the last months with a dirty campaign worth of Goebbels: "If you repeat a lie a million times, it will become a truth", against Andrés Manuel
López Obrador, candidate of the center-left-wing party PRD, who headed the polls for several years now. Why was he ahead? Well, he did a great job as a mayor of Mexico City since 2000, basically not stealing money and working for the people. He vowed to do the same at a national level, changing the current technocratic economic model that has stagnated the country for 30 years and motivated massive immigration to the USA (about half a million per year). Actually, depending on the price of oil, the money sent by mexicans to their families constitutes the first or second source of income to the country. That is NOT normal... Even people in the USA got doubts about Mexican economic policy (implemented by Harvard-educated rich boys): maybe a free market doesn't work in all countries (just like democracy doesn't work in all countries...). Investment bankers and businessmen gave support to López Obrador, because he was the only candidate to have shown the ability to get things done, while the government of Vicente Fox has only damaged our international relations and benefitted a few people. It was this few people, who have money and power, and would lose it if López Obrador won, that plotted the "victory" at any cost of Calderón, e.g. giving presents with state's money to people who might not vote for him.
The dirty campaign (e.g. saying that López Obrador is a danger for Mexico, and many other fallacies that were later prohibited by the Federal Electoral Institute, but as soon as a TV spot was banned, they would come with a new one) helped Calderón to reduce the difference between him and López Obrador, but not completely ("you can't fool all the people all the time"), López Obrador was still ahead in the polls a week before the elections. So, in order to ensure the prevail of the privileged ones, the election was rigged. First of all, it turns out that the company of the brother-in-law of Caderón developed the software to count the votes (not to mention other privileges that the brother-in-law obtained in the last few years). Second, the PRD made its own exit polls (since this is not the first rigged election), giving López Obrador a victory with more than 2% margin. After the elections, a "preliminary" counting gave Calderón a victory with a difference of 1.04% of the votes. However, three million votes were missing from that count, supposedly because they had "inconsistencies". Still, when the PRD denounced this, some of them WERE counted. So, which inconsistencies? When the "final" counting of the votes began, López Obrador had a clear lead. However, this was reduced, and it seems that some people knew when the balance would tip over. At the end, Calderón was ahead by 0.5%, about 200,000 votes, so in principle he would be the next president. However, irregularities are popping everywhere: boxes with votes appeared in the Xochiaca junkyard in Mexico City. People who helped counted votes in their district note that the votes they counted differ from the results given by the Federal Electoral Institute (IFE) in their webpage... and even some mathematicians claim that the results given by the IFE were the result of a preprogrammed computer algorithm, not of vote counting, so that the result was known beforehand, decided by the people who developed the software and not by the people.
I'm sure that in the next few days much more dirty tricks will show up. The PRD will claim a recount vote by vote, and all the complaints will be dealt by the Federal Electoral Tribunal, who will officially decide who will be the next president... so we'll still be in suspense for a couple of months...
López Obrador, candidate of the center-left-wing party PRD, who headed the polls for several years now. Why was he ahead? Well, he did a great job as a mayor of Mexico City since 2000, basically not stealing money and working for the people. He vowed to do the same at a national level, changing the current technocratic economic model that has stagnated the country for 30 years and motivated massive immigration to the USA (about half a million per year). Actually, depending on the price of oil, the money sent by mexicans to their families constitutes the first or second source of income to the country. That is NOT normal... Even people in the USA got doubts about Mexican economic policy (implemented by Harvard-educated rich boys): maybe a free market doesn't work in all countries (just like democracy doesn't work in all countries...). Investment bankers and businessmen gave support to López Obrador, because he was the only candidate to have shown the ability to get things done, while the government of Vicente Fox has only damaged our international relations and benefitted a few people. It was this few people, who have money and power, and would lose it if López Obrador won, that plotted the "victory" at any cost of Calderón, e.g. giving presents with state's money to people who might not vote for him.
The dirty campaign (e.g. saying that López Obrador is a danger for Mexico, and many other fallacies that were later prohibited by the Federal Electoral Institute, but as soon as a TV spot was banned, they would come with a new one) helped Calderón to reduce the difference between him and López Obrador, but not completely ("you can't fool all the people all the time"), López Obrador was still ahead in the polls a week before the elections. So, in order to ensure the prevail of the privileged ones, the election was rigged. First of all, it turns out that the company of the brother-in-law of Caderón developed the software to count the votes (not to mention other privileges that the brother-in-law obtained in the last few years). Second, the PRD made its own exit polls (since this is not the first rigged election), giving López Obrador a victory with more than 2% margin. After the elections, a "preliminary" counting gave Calderón a victory with a difference of 1.04% of the votes. However, three million votes were missing from that count, supposedly because they had "inconsistencies". Still, when the PRD denounced this, some of them WERE counted. So, which inconsistencies? When the "final" counting of the votes began, López Obrador had a clear lead. However, this was reduced, and it seems that some people knew when the balance would tip over. At the end, Calderón was ahead by 0.5%, about 200,000 votes, so in principle he would be the next president. However, irregularities are popping everywhere: boxes with votes appeared in the Xochiaca junkyard in Mexico City. People who helped counted votes in their district note that the votes they counted differ from the results given by the Federal Electoral Institute (IFE) in their webpage... and even some mathematicians claim that the results given by the IFE were the result of a preprogrammed computer algorithm, not of vote counting, so that the result was known beforehand, decided by the people who developed the software and not by the people.
I'm sure that in the next few days much more dirty tricks will show up. The PRD will claim a recount vote by vote, and all the complaints will be dealt by the Federal Electoral Tribunal, who will officially decide who will be the next president... so we'll still be in suspense for a couple of months...
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