Question About Mexical Electoral Coalitions...

[Cheung Mo]

Should read "Mexican", obviously. I'm half-asleep.

I've often seen state and local elections in Mexico where the Workers Party (far-left, supposedly Maoist) will back the PAN (conservative Catholic) candidate over the PRD (social democratic) candidate or running their own candidate.

What would cause this to happen?

[R_P_A_S]

Originally posted by Cheung [email protected] 2 2006, 02:06 AM
Should read "Mexican", obviously. I'm half-asleep.

I've often seen state and local elections in Mexico where the Workers Party (far-left, supposedly Maoist) will back the PAN (conservative Catholic) candidate over the PRD (social democratic) candidate or running their own candidate.

What would cause this to happen?
When I used to live in Mexico my mother used to vote for the PT(partido del trabajo) which now has join the P.R.D. But lots of people in our town (mainly an industrial and agricultural town) would vote for PAN. because most mexicans are very religious and at the same time simple people. in a way we are conformist and aren't as radical as we should be. Lots of this people own their lands in this towns and believe that a "down to earth democratic christian man" will help them. so they dont venture too far left for the leftist parties. and also they dont have as much money to campaign.
PRD has recently stepped up because 5 political parties joind it. these all being leftist.

[bayano]

firstly, i hope this becomes the official mexican election thread, now that the election is currently underway and results will be in anytime from tonight to a runoff.

as for the prd, i have friends who are organizers for them, but theyre a mixed bag. a mass party like the pt in brazil, which means there is a left-wing and a centrist wing, and the centrist wing invariably comes up against the left sometimes. lopez obrador is expected by no one to user in an evo morales or chavez style process. we'll be lucky, i think, if he turns out any better than lula, who really disillusioned much of the brazilian and international left.

one thing is for sure from a panamanian perspective- the prd in mexico is nothing like and far better than the prd of panama

[Marion]

Bayano (or anyone else) - if you have any news on how things are looking in the election it would be really appreciated if you could post it here.

Its interesting to read that The Economist (British neo-liberal magazine) has been pretty non-committal about the election, with it sounding like they'd tend towards Calderon, but have basically said that they're not convinced that any of them are different from each other.

What do you guys see of the Other Campaign and the Zapatistas? Do you think things might kick-off if there is seen to be an electoral fix (or whatever)?

[bolshevik butcher]

I think the zapatistas stance on this election was ridiculous and ultraleftist. How can they possibly say that a social democratic victory will not be more favourable for the mexican working class. They could work in and antogonise inside the social democratic movment, or remain an irrelevance in the middle of nowhere.

[Guerrilla22]

Obrador is going to win, it will be great because it will piss off the US. I hope he builds a high speed train to take people to the boarder, as he has discussed.

[bayano]

too close to call, thats whats echoing thru the news reports so far. they expect it may take days to figure out who won, and possibly more. and the polls over the last month of so have given zero indication, tho ive never trusted polls and theyre even less useful in large third world countries like mexico. i thought for so long that lopez obrador would take it pretty easily, but they drilled him hard earlier this year, and you know the united states has its dirty hands in the election to the best of its capacity without being too obvious.

mexican activists have long told me that mexican citizens in the usa would largely go prd, but there were too many obstacles to voting or getting information about how to vote, despite widespread corporate news claims to the contrary. the local reps for mexican national politics in the midwest are all accusing each other (and admitting in the case of PAN) of violating election rules. but in mexico? its anybody's guess.

honestly, tho, while i still think lopez obrador will take it (and a tiny win for PAN's calderon can assuredly be partly blamed by boosts from the colossus to the north), i have also always thought there is a much bigger question- what the jode will lopez obrador do in office? how much influence will he take from his party's sizeable radical left, and how much from its more bureaucratic and corrupt sectors, and how much from the centrist sectors? another lula, perhaps, tho hopefully not. but i think a lot of izquierdistas expect something like that.

EDIT: slight lead for PAN with just over half of ballots counted, and that lead is disappearing as numbers keep coming in. both PAN and PRD have declared victory in presidential race

EDIT: wow, univision is claiming a big victory in the menial number of ballots of mexicans voting in the usa. but very few who could actually did vote. the difference between lopez obrador and calderon is shrinking. its now less than 1.5% according to the news sources im watching.

[bayano]

wow, the difference is now about nine-tenths of a percent, with 30% of the ballots left to be counted

[Marion]

Cheers very much for the updates - most handy...

With the gap closing, are the projections that the PRD will take it? Or are the uncounted votes more from PAN areas?

[Dreckt]

Maybe there will be a coalition like in Germany? That would be ironic.

[bayano]

well, now the Federal Electoral Institute has spoiled my fun. they have declared that the official results wont be out before wednesday, tho counting is still going on for the preliminary count. oh well, i keep an eye on this at least. and it is believed that if the results continue so closely, either way there may very well be a contestation of the count. but mexico, unlike the better part of latin america, doesnt do runoff elections, which is a shame cuz im sure some of the pri supporters would go over to the prd.

[Cheung Mo]

Why would PRI supporters support the PRD? How could anyone dumb enough to support the most corrupt and dishonest party in the world other than the GOP and the Kuomintang be smart enough to understand real socialism?

When I look at state elections, I see a fair number of PAN-PRD coalitions and I never see a PRI-PRD coalition.

I also occasionally see PRI-Rest Of Left or PAN-Rest of Left against PRI/PAN and PRD, which makes no sense to me.

[Rawthentic]

Im currently in Mexico, where the race is very close between Obrador and Calderon. It seems that in Durango, where I currently am, a city of about 1 million, Calderon is a huge figure. I believe, unfortunately, that PAN with Calderon will win this election.

[R_P_A_S]

I seriously hope and wish that freakin' Calderon doesn't win! if he wins I wont be moving back to mexico anytime soon. I want to see ho Obrador will work out. I want to see if more mexicans become interested in the lefist ideology. also i wanted him to get rid of this free market bullshit

[bayano]

here is greg palast's brief take (http://www.gregpalast.com/stealing-mexico) on the election, and ive heard plenty about mostly IRI work on the elections, including vote counting

[Karl Marx's Camel]

Im currently in Mexico, where the race is very close between Obrador and Calderon. It seems that in Durango, where I currently am, a city of about 1 million, Calderon is a huge figure.

How come he is a huge figure?

[Scots_Socialist]

Any news on the result yet Comrades?Can find a english speaking source on the "net"

[Guerrilla22]

IT appears as though Calderon has won unfortunately, although Obrador has called for a recount.

[McLeft]

3 million votes were unaccounted for and the difference between Obrador and Calderon was only 400,000 votes so anything could happen. a recount which is underway will definitely change the result either for Calderon or Obrador.

[Guerrilla22]

I'm affraid that since the differetial in votes is so narrow that the US will see an opprotunity to get involved and pull an orange revolution.

[bayano]

Originally posted by [email protected] 4 2006, 07:06 PM
3 million votes were unaccounted for and the difference between Obrador and Calderon was only 400,000 votes so anything could happen. a recount which is underway will definitely change the result either for Calderon or Obrador.
according to the federal election institute (the governing body over the elections) there were 2.8 million unaccounted for due to errors in the votes, and they will be included in the final count. more than enough to swing it over the 400k lead that calderon supposedly has according to the preliminary vote. its not over yet

[bayano]

the electoral institute just issued a press conference after some more votes were counted, narrowing PAN/calderon's lead to 250k. the full count starts in the morning

[bayano]

as the real count goes on in mexico, with just over one-third of the vote counted, the news media is reporting PRD's lopez-obrador with a 2.6% lead over PAN's calderon.

also, a frustrating note, many capitalist news media outlets have published editorials or commentaries. one, in the chicago tribune for example, mentioned lopez obrador's vocal demand that the re-count (which is actually the real count, not a recount) be done fairly, and the trib claims he presents no evidence of fraud or anything else. but yes he has, from the 2.58-3million votes that were initially uncounted, to the IRI funding of PAN, to other irregularities at the polls, he has most definitely cited specific examples. ill probably not update the numbers again until its final.

[razboz]

Calderon won.

Please Sub Commandante do something to save Mexico.

'Nuff said.

[bayano]

well, thats a silly assertion. 47.3% ballots counted and reported and lopez obrador is still winning by 2.7% (i.e. a slightly higher margin than before.

EDIT: 60.07% and lopez obrador ("AMLO") holds the same lead

[bolshevik butcher]

Originally posted by [email protected] 5 2006, 08:08 PM
Calderon won.

Please Sub Commandante do something to save Mexico.

'Nuff said.
What strike with his tiny irrelevant force in the jungle?

[razboz]

Calderon won.

Please Sub Commandante do something to save Mexico.

'Nuff said.

What strike with his tiny irrelevant force in the jungle?

No like actually run for friggin president! Or enter the FZLN into parliment! Make a bid for power. I mean maybe not Marcos personnally but get the Zapatistas into gear! A lot of mexicans felt betrrayed when the FZLN didnt bother and just went around touring the country in their "Otra Campana" me included. They had the backing do something bigger and if theyd actually been doing something they may have gotten the media coverage necessary to bring attention to the cause of those below. But as it is they didnt actually pose a threa tto the elections so no one bothered! 60 % turn out! The Zpatistas failed to use their popular support, support they had gathered over the years.

What a waste...

[bayano]

but i dont think that is strategically, politically, ideologically in the interests of the zapatistas. firstly, they dont and never claim to be a national movement, but prefer to influence other regional movements, so parliamentairanism cant mean much to them. and second, they have no real reason to go parliamentarian, they dont exist in a context that requires such- they have control of parts of their region and dont plan to disolve back into the system as much as advance in their territories.

oh, and with over 94.61% counted in the official vote, lopez-obrador has a dwindling lead of about two-thirds of a percentage point

[razboz]

If its true that the Zapatistas have been mostly concentrating on local government in Chiapas this is just because they havent been able to do anything else or havent wanted to for logistic or PR reasons or something. If you remember your EZLN history in their First Declaration they said they remained Mexican and were fighting for mexico against the Neo-liberal invaders.


We have the Mexican people on our side, we have the beloved tri-colored flag highly respected by our insurgent fighters.

Their goals are to change mexican society. They tried revolution but failed because most of mexico is now middle class, not lower class as it used to be (one of the reasons PAN got so much in the elections.)

They need to take action if just to save their autonomous areas from collpseing from within. Poverty in the Caracoles has never been higher. The entire movement faces dislocation at the hands of its enemies. And the Zapatista high command goes on a tour, talking to people and not taking action.

[rikaguilera]

Just an update on the re-count, and the hidden/lost/missing ballots. This is a cut and paste from Narco News.



Today, in Mexico, begins a “recount” of votes cast in Sunday’s presidential election… in which the umpires are refusing to recount the votes.

Election authorities of the Federal Electoral Institute (IFE, in its Spanish initials) closed ranks on Tuesday with the National Action Party (PAN) of President Vicente Fox and candidate Felipe Calderón to oppose the actual recounting the votes. This, on the heels of Tuesday’s “discovery” of 2.5 million votes hidden by IFE since Sunday’s election, added to a growing body of evidence – and corresponding public distrust in the institutions – that a gargantuan electoral fraud has been perpetrated.

The partial “recount” began at 8 a.m. on Wednesday, in Mexico’s 300 election districts – each with an average of 400 polling places and 140,000 votes to tabulate – and sparks are already flying over the struggle to conduct an authentic count in the sunlight of public scrutiny. Attorneys and party bosses of the PAN – whose triumphalism has turned to visible panic in recent hours – have orders from headquarters to universally oppose the reopening of any ballot boxes and subsequent public accounting of the actual number of votes cast for each candidate. On the other side, representatives of the Democratic Revolution Party (PRD) of candidate Andrés Manuel López Obrador and many outraged citizens armed with video cameras have besieged the 300 recount locales demanding an actual ballot-by-ballot recount.

This first stage of the process is likely to take days: Results from more than 11,000 precincts (the ones hidden by IFE – in most of them, López Obrador won the vote) that must be recounted, vote-by-vote, in accordance with Mexican electoral law. That is an average of almost 40 polling places per district. And with two well-organized sides battling over whether the votes will be counted aloud, combined with the stonewalling incompetence that has been IFE’s trademark, an already fragile process is coming apart at the seams.


Police cordon a Nezahuacoyotl garbage dump where ballots and ballot-boxes from three precincts won by López Obrador were discovered on Tuesday.
Photo: D.R. 2006 El Universal
One of the major problems for IFE and the Fox administration is that if they were to allow the bread-and-butter recount that the public demands, the ugly truth would come out that an unknown number of ballot boxes have “disappeared” in the past two days. The ballots from three precincts in the city of Nezahuacoyotl – a López Obrador stronghold – were discovered yesterday in the municipal garbage dump. The results from two of those precincts have been missing, since Sunday, from IFE’s vote tallies. An IFE official, ambushed by television reporters, exacerbated the crime yesterday when she blamed the Mexican military: the Armed Forces, not IFE, are supposedly guarding the ballots, she said, in defense of her bureaucracy. This, sources close to the military told Narco News, produced significant anger among the military generals and troops who – if the public does not believe or accept IFE’s final decision – will be called upon to quell the national rebellion that follows.

The Armed Forces are understandably concerned about the very real possibility that history will be repeated: that they will be turned into the scapegoats of a process-gone-awry. If, as in the 1960s and 1970s, the military is to be called upon to repress a civilian population’s protests, highway blockades, strikes and occupations of government centers – steps that are inevitable if IFE refuses to recount the votes in public – the generals will be turned into the primary recipients of the national and global repudiation that follows. Significantly, and distinct from the presidential elections six years ago, the Armed Forces have remained totally silent. Missing from the usual script are the previously obligatory statements by the military that it will unconditionally back IFE’s verdict. There is the real possibility that if President Fox decides to try to quell the social unrest, that the military will refuse to become his enforcing patsy.

Although many and vast, the various federal police agencies do not count with the numbers to successfully contain a national revolt. The events of June 14 in Oaxaca, when 15,000 striking teachers repelled the dawn attack by 3,000 riot cops, is still fresh in the collective memory. With mere sticks and stones they beat back the batons, shields, teargas bazookas, and real bullets from real guns, of the invading police, sent them running in retreat, and took back 56 blocks of the city’s downtown. The Mexico from below is more organized, united, and sophisticated than ever before. And, perhaps ironically, it is precisely in the states traveled in recent months by the Zapatista anti-electoral Other Campaign and its Subcomandante Marcos where the electorate voted most heavily for López Obrador and where the conditions most evidently exist to defend that vote in the streets and on the highways if need be.


The IFE’s Foul Play

The malicious behavior by the Federal Electoral Institute and its chairman Luis Carlos Ugalde – in their visible maneuvers partial to Fox’s PAN and Calderón throughout the election season and since – was evident prior to the election, but on Sunday night became clear as never before to the Mexican public. On Monday, the bias of the “umpire” became clearer as hundreds of specific examples of fraudulent vote counts began to surface across the Internet. On Tuesday, more so, when Ugalde and IFE were caught red-handed in a big lie: their knowingly false claim that the preliminary results system had tabulated “98.5 percent” of the vote when, in fact, the IFE had hidden 3.3 million (more than seven percent) of the precinct tallies from public view.


Proceso magazine, on Monday, put IFE chief Luis Carlos Ugalde on its cover with the headline “Arbitro Complice” (“Complicit Umpire”)
The cauldron that contained the public desire for a democracy long denied began to boil over when the IFE and the two national networks – Televisa and TV Azteca – decided to withhold their exit poll results from the public on Sunday night. This left the IFE’s Preliminary Election Results Program (PREP) as the only public source of information. Statisticians and mathematicians are having a field day with the manner in which IFE selectively released results to create a false impression that Calderón was the victor. Some speak of computer-generated fraud and scientific concepts such as “algorithms” that warped IFE’s PREP results – your reporter is agnostic, so far, on whether that kind of fraud was committed – but there is one indisputable fact that reveals IFE’s one-sided control of the flow of information, and it has nothing to do with fancy scientific concepts. Although IFE’s own preliminary numbers today show a difference of only 0.64 percent between PAN and PRD votes, on election night and into Monday IFE selectively rationed the release of partial results to, at each step, portray Calderón as the winner.

The first maneuver was transparent enough: IFE began its online preliminary count on Sunday by selecting result estimates mainly from the Northern Mexican states where Calderón won the vote. This was evident on the IFE PREP results because they were listed state-by-state and also by the five electoral regions of Mexico. Less than an hour after polls closed – at 6:57 p.m. – the earliest IFE results claimed Calderón had 40.87 percent to just 33.69 percent for López Obrador; a difference of more than seven percentage points. But look at this “photograph” of that moment in time.


Graphic: IFE preliminary count at 6:57 p.m. on Sunday. Click for larger version.
“Circunscripción 2,” circled in red, represents the northern region of Mexico – where all polls showed to be Calderón’s strongest support and López Obrador’s weakest – and although it represents only 20 percent of the country’s population, IFE led with its numbers as 40 percent of its preliminary vote total. The region includes three states in the pacific time zone where polls had yet to close and the rest of it is far from IFE headquarters in Mexico City. It is the most geographically disperse region, too, making it a slower process to get the results in to Mexico City. But IFE doubled its statistical influence from this region in the first hour to simulate a false impression that Calderón was far in the lead.

And so it went, all night long. With each and every update, IFE selectively released the vote tallies in a manner that kept Calderón in the lead. This is statistically impossible to do with a final tally of 0.6 percent difference between the two candidates (such a process with a close vote would, if reported as results came in, always show the tally tipping back and forth from one candidate to the other) – unless the results were being rationed selectively. (As example, at noon today, with 25 percent of precinct results tabulated in this very first stage of the recount, López Obrador has 36.98 percent to 34.39 percent for Calderón: the man “in the lead” is likely to tip back and forth all day as occurs in close races. That is what IFE’s PREP results would have shown on Sunday night and Monday, had it truly entered the preliminary results randomly as they came in.)


As Sunday night marched into Monday morning, López Obrador closed the gap. Until 70 percent of the preliminary results were tallied, the López Obrador vote rose in a straight and steady line (see red line on chart). But suddenly, with between 70 and 80 percent of the preliminary results tallied, the trajectory that would have put López Obrador in the lead when less than 90 percent of the votes had been counted, took a swift downturn, exactly corresponding to a swift upturn by the third-place candidate Roberto Madrazo of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), represented by the green line on the chart.

Defenders of IFE explain this suspicious turn of events as one of “the rural precincts coming in last,” where PRI was expected to do better. But rural district voters constituted the weakest vote for Calderón across the country; he came in a distant third among rural farmers. As the line graph shows, in that latter stage of the posting of PREP results, Calderón’s vote trajectory continues to run in the same downward straight line that it had traveled since early in the night. Had these truly been numbers from rural districts, his trajectory (the blue line) would have dipped significantly farther below.

On Monday, IFE closed its preliminary results, claiming that it had counted 98.5 percent of the precincts. With Calderon up by 377,000 votes (about 1.4 percent) it seemed to the casual observer that his lead was insurmountable. The problem is, the IFE did not tell the truth. Only about 92 percent of the preliminary tallies had been included in that count, leaving 3.3 million votes out of the count. The claim – posted with the PREP results – that 98.5 percent had been counted was knowingly false. It was intended, as has every step taken by IFE in the vote counting, to create the false impression of a clear lead by the candidate of the State, Felipe Calderón.

This was a blatant act of tampering with the PREP results by Ugalde and IFE officials. As IFE’s own website says: “La alteración de estos resultados es delito federal.” That means, “Alteration of these results is a federal crime.” The selective withholding of those results on Sunday and since – again, and again, and again – constitutes multiple counts of what ought to be a criminal charge against those IFE officials responsible for withholding the tallies and also for falsely claiming that 98.5 percent had been counted and included in the final PREP tally when they knew it to be false.


The Missing Three Million Votes

When, on Monday, Andrés Manuel López Obrador accused the IFE of hiding 3.3 million votes, Commercial Media pundits and columnists scoffed, accused him of conspiracy theories, and continued their permanent campaign to marginalize him and his supporters.

But by Tuesday afternoon, IFE suddenly “found” 2.5 million of those missing votes.

It is difficult to believe anything IFE or Ugalde say at this point given the documented deceptions they carried out on Sunday and Monday, but even IFE’s accounting of those 2.5 million suddenly reappeared votes shows a strong lead by – surprise, surprise – López Obrador:


Obrador (PRD): 888,971
Madrazo (PRI): 809,003
Calderón (PAN): 743,795
Mercado (ASD): 28,040
Campa (NA): 13,096
Write-ins: 15,019
Nullified votes: 82,452

Not counting the “nullified” votes, this narrowed Calderón’s purported lead by 145,000 votes; nearly halving his supposed margin to 0.64 percent, or roughly 257,000 votes – less than two votes in each of 130,000 precincts.

As part II of this series will demonstrate, there is a consistent pattern of “vote shaving” against López Obrador between the official voting tallies (known as “actas”) in precincts throughout the nation, and the PREP results. Narco News will publish photographs of the official actas and demonstrate how the PREP results published by IFE shaved handfuls of votes from López Obrador’s local tallies – sometimes two, or three, or six votes; and frequently simply by chopping off a digit (in one case, for example, changing the PRD candidate’s tally from 188 to 88).

There are more missing precincts (with more than 700,000 votes), plus at least 909,000 “nullified” votes that, given IFE’s clear bias and unfair handling of the votes, must be reopened to find if there truly were grounds to nullify them.

There is more, so much more, to report. But the facts above alone obligate a full recount, ballot-by-ballot. And it is revealing that Calderón, Fox’s PAN and the IFE are stonewalling in opposition to a public recount, while López Obrador and the PRD are insisting on it.

“El que nada debe, nada teme,” is a popular Mexican expression: He who owes nothing, fears nothing.

If they are so sure they “won,” why do they oppose a full recount?

At stake: criminal penalties for IFE bureaucrats if it is found that ballots were tampered with or “disappeared.” That is one fear. The other – justified or not – is who wins the presidency of the Republic of Mexico.

If the IFE tries to rush to judgment and declare a winner prior to a full recount, Mexico will explode. The IFE, the PAN, Fox and Calderón are thus playing with fire.

To be continued…

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[Marion]

Originally posted by [email protected] 6 2006, 02:40 PM
If its true that the Zapatistas have been mostly concentrating on local government in Chiapas this is just because they havent been able to do anything else or havent wanted to for logistic or PR reasons or something. If you remember your EZLN history in their First Declaration they said they remained Mexican and were fighting for mexico against the Neo-liberal invaders.


We have the Mexican people on our side, we have the beloved tri-colored flag highly respected by our insurgent fighters.

Their goals are to change mexican society. They tried revolution but failed because most of mexico is now middle class, not lower class as it used to be (one of the reasons PAN got so much in the elections.)

They need to take action if just to save their autonomous areas from collpseing from within. Poverty in the Caracoles has never been higher. The entire movement faces dislocation at the hands of its enemies. And the Zapatista high command goes on a tour, talking to people and not taking action.
If by "revolution" you mean the armed uprising then I think this was not primarily an attempt to change Mexican society. I see it as an attempt to gain a space for indigenous Indians in Chiapas (although obviously this had wider implications) - hence the push for the San Andreas Accords. I don't think you can say the "revolution" has failed, I think its an ongoing matter and, personally, I think the Zapatistas have developed in some very positive ways since 1994 (not, I would stress, that they are beyond criticism at all - there's a number of issues I'd query).

Since then the struggle has continuously unfolded and La Otra can be seen as a continuation of this (as the 6th Declaration makes pretty clear). Hence the statements in the 6th Declaration about supporting struggles outside Mexico, e.g. solidarity with other oppressed peoples in Latin America. Personally I'm always questioning whenever I see Marcos' references to "Mexico", but he's also recently been very critical of national borders, so am not sure that you're meant to read it strictly in those terms. Certainly it would be handy if he clarified things though.

Anyway, in the spirit of La Otra openness and listening, I'd be happy to listen to your views on the above and a couple of my questions below:

1) What would you prefer to see the Zapatistas doing to La Otra?
2) What do you think of recent statements from the Zapatistas that La Otra is about action (e.g. Atenco)?

[Rawthentic]

Originally posted by [email protected] 3 2006, 11:01 AM
I seriously hope and wish that freakin' Calderon doesn't win! if he wins I wont be moving back to mexico anytime soon. I want to see ho Obrador will work out. I want to see if more mexicans become interested in the lefist ideology. also i wanted him to get rid of this free market bullshit
Dont count on him, getting rid of the free market if he wins. Many Mexicans are terrified at the idea of Obrador winning because he will "be another Fidel Castro or Hugo Chavez". They say that, even though they acknowledge that not much will change with Calderon, they would rather stay the same than opt for Obrador.

[R_P_A_S]

Originally posted by hastalavictoria+Jul 6 2006, 04:55 PM--> (hastalavictoria @ Jul 6 2006, 04:55 PM)
[email protected] 3 2006, 11:01 AM
I seriously hope and wish that freakin' Calderon doesn't win! if he wins I wont be moving back to mexico anytime soon. I want to see ho Obrador will work out. I want to see if more mexicans become interested in the lefist ideology. also i wanted him to get rid of this free market bullshit
Dont count on him, getting rid of the free market if he wins. Many Mexicans are terrified at the idea of Obrador winning because he will "be another Fidel Castro or Hugo Chavez". They say that, even though they acknowledge that not much will change with Calderon, they would rather stay the same than opt for Obrador. [/b]
I personaly love the comparations of Obrador to Hugo! :lol:

[Karl Marx's Camel]

So apparently, Calderon won. And there are six year terms in Mexico? And Calderon will begin office in December 2006? That will mean, he will stay until early 2012/beginning of 2013, if not kicked out or resigning before then?

I have to admit it felt like a huge brick of ice hit my stomach when I heard Calderon winning.

[Rawthentic]

Why is that? I understand that Calderon is another conservative, pro-free market ideologist, but what can Obrador really offer? He´s not gonna end poverty, much less corruption. Maybe the Mexican people will be a little better off, but nothing significant.

[R_P_A_S]

I just wanted mexico to try a leftist president. fuck PAN and Calderon. all Bush Puppets

[Brekisonphilous]

Originally posted by [email protected] 6 2006, 10:27 PM
Why is that? I understand that Calderon is another conservative, pro-free market ideologist, but what can Obrador really offer? He´s not gonna end poverty, much less corruption. Maybe the Mexican people will be a little better off, but nothing significant.
That may be so, but wouldn't you want as much to be done for the less fortunate as possible? A victory for the left side of politics? A huge upset for our government?

Sorry, but I typically want politicans to win who best represent our political views, no matter how far off that may be.
Left > Right.

[bayano]

Originally posted by [email protected] 6 2006, 09:39 PM
I just wanted mexico to try a leftist president. fuck PAN and Calderon. all Bush Puppets
not bush puppets, puppets of imperialismo estadounidense. bush is a symptom, us imperialism/capitalism is the disease

as for election, i hope the prdistas fight this shit as much as they say they are going to. way too many irregularities for this to have been clean win without it, tho that is true for most top-level elections around the world i suppose. definitely hope there is an official recount and any dumped ballots are brought back into it. yet another case where i wish they did runoff voting. not to mention, the fourth and fifth parties in the race had an effect. this whole shit is bullshit

[Cheung Mo]

Hahaha...The only election in which the lack of a run-off was a good thing was Taiwan 2000...Who in their right fucking mind would want to see the Kuomintang or the Peple First Party win the Presidency again (as would have been the case in 2000 had their been a run-off...No way those KMT pigs would have voted for A-bien in a run-off.)