Another stolen election, and more silence. Poor people weeping in the streets. Balotts found in dumpsters. Exit polls contradicting vote tallies in poor neighborhoods... Here is a great post about this.Mercury News: "The vote machines were rigged" - Lopez Obrador
17 comments:
If it can happen in this nation, it can happen anywhere. I am sure the Bushocracy had something to do with it.
I'm glad, as a mexican lesbian, that it was Calderon who won. Every single gay mexican I know voted for Calderon. The left wing claims to support diversity, while the reality is that they are extremely intolerant and power hungry. Just like we have seen happen with all the great socialist leaders and the dictatorships of terror they've submitted the people who fought for them in a hope of a better life. I have friends from both the left wing and the right wing parties who were watching over the balotts. Truth has many layers. Information can be manipulated one way or another. If you take Jalisco, Nuevo Leon, Guanajuato and other similar states where support for Calderon is unmistakable, you'll find that votes for him were also "dumped" in favor of Lopez Obrador. I'm surprised people backup articles that promote violence and begin with a quote by President Chavez, who is now taking his country for a poverty ride of unemployment and general fear. If we could only look more closely at the facts instead of romantically jump in favor of some idea that can be twisted in the benefit of war or some politician's ego.
Anonymous, excellent thought provoking post.
Once we know who won, I wouldn't mind providing my name and blog link. But we have experience in Mexico (during the times of the PRI) with reporters and writers showing up dead the day after they wrote something against the party in power. Thankfully, those days have been sort of forgotten because this past presidential term was very open and tolerant. Let's hope things continue peacefully here in Mexico.
Purhaps I was hasty. Let's see how this plays out.
We all pray for peace that's for sure.
To the anonymous (for now) poster: Thank you for your posts, and please keep them coming! It is refreshing to hear from someone who has actual knowledge/experience with the situation. I hope you will add many layers of nuance to the discussion.
John: Your comment is intersting to me in that it assumes that the USA is at the apex of evolution among nations. This is a common point of view of Americans, and probably of people from other countries about their homes too. (As an aside, there is and interesting parallel where many people of faith view their own faith as the 'true' one as compared to others.) The problem with operating on such assumptions, other than being seen as obnoxious (if unintentionally), is that it makes one complacent. Complacent people forget to be vigilant. Lack of vigilance leaves the door open to people like Bush. If you hear someone say 'it can't happen here', look for it to happen there!
I am definetly afraid of the power our country has usurped. I can only hope that the next adminstration understands how our people have been misrepresented.
I think anonymous brought up great points, but I am still very very skeptical about this. The margin of "victory" was so slim, and the reports of fraud are still trickling in. We didn't even know the extent to which our own election was stolen in Ohio until recently. And how interesting that Bush was quick to congratulate Calderon even though it is still in the courts.
Here is an interesting article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/08/world/americas/08mexico.html?pagewanted=1
Mark, would you elaborate on the Ohio issue? I missed this.
Anonymous, would you care to say something about why every gay Mexicon you know voted for Calderon. You make that statement, but then you basically go on to say that the left is power-hungry and dictatorial. While there is truth to this when speaking of some leftist leaders, it's also true of many conservative leaders, and so it's not so convincing.
I did a bit of Google searching to see if I could find anything in the English-lanugage press about the gay vote in the Mexicon election, and nothing turned up. Perhaps that's because I wasn't searching in Spanish.
I don't mean to be rude, but I'd like to press you to elaborate more. I'll admit that this is partly because you are anonymous. Though I respect your reasons for desiring anonymity, for all I know, you're an MBA student in the US who thinks that Calderon will make a better trading partner for the US. But even if I knew more aboiut who you were, I'd want some more info behind such a bold statement as, "Every single gay Mexican I know voted for Calderon."
Because I was curious and I'm procrastinating, I asked a web-based librarian (accessible through http://www.massanswers.org, which is a great service) if there was anything they could find about the LGBT vote in Mexico. Librarians tend to be some of the best people to ask about uncovering info like this!
He couldn't find anything after a lengthy search. This doesn't in any way disprove anonymous' claim about how the people she knows voted, but it seems there's no way to know if the folks she knows are indicative of a national trend.
Robert F Kennedy has an excellent article in rollingstone last month detailing fact by fact how Ohioh was stolen. And he only focused on a few counties, which would have been enough to tip the election to Kerry.
Here is a link to the article:
http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/10432334/was_the_2004_election_stolen
As far as Florida in 2000 goes, Pat Buchanan admitted that there were way too many votes for him and he was sure were supposed to go to Gore. So even without the Nader factor, Gore won.
Calderon will be bad for the poor people of Mexico. For one thing he is right in line when it comes to the militant and unnecessarily violent war on drugs that America loves so much.
Well, I do believe that Calderon will make a better trading partner for anyone. I don't shop at Walmart because their policies usually bankrupt their suppliers or leave them with very little profit. I buy my organic vegetables because I believe that agricultors deserve better pay for their hard labor. I don't drive. I believe in public transport, which Lopez Obrador let deteriorate misserably in Mexico City. And so on. I'm not pro-corporations. But I'm also not anti-communication. It is a reality that our world is increasingly connected and barriers between countries are being blurred. Look at the European Union. We are closer to a Global Village than we've ever been. I have observed two trends among fellow gay mexicans. There are those who question and judge from experience. Where PAN has a majority of senators and a governor, gay bars tend to be left alone. They even proliferate during PAN terms. Though Calderon has openly stated that he won't back up gay marriage, at least we know he is being forward. Lopez Obrador, when asked about the issue, just waved it off by saying he is not homophobic, but won't discuss such matter, he leaves it up to the courts. This is because he knows that his vote thrives on the support he gets from minorities. But PRDist states aren't exactly gay friendly. During his campaign, he didn't want to grant interviews to anyone, neither did he participate in programs such as those where every candidate was asked 7 general arts and culture questions. He insisted that he couldn't participate in any debate or make any public declaration before the elections because "many hopes where placed on him and everything was a complot against his image". I strongly believe that the people should get to know their candidates. Every other candidate participated and allowed both their strengths and weeknesses to be exposed. Why not him? Now, all of a sudden he's granting everyone interviews and even calling international media, while before he just shut the door on them. I don't know what's next. Oh, I can imagine. Now we go through two more months of public demonstration, of feeding hatred to all his followers and getting our country back to the unstable place with even less jobs around for the poor people. Anonymous before me mada a good point. So maybe the uninformed gay people voted for Lopez Obrador. And I don't blame them. Nor do I blame intelectuals like Fernando del Paso, whom I respect, for supporting Lopez Obrador. It is common for artists and intelectuals to support their peoples dreams, even though after they put someone in power they have to hide in exhile. I also think that if someone wanted to make fraud of the elections, that margin by which Calderon wouldn't have been so small. They would have done it so there was no doubt of the winner. Why go through this long dragging hell if not for the sake of democracy? So let them count the votes one by one. As many times as they want. They can even call for another election. I believe the result would still be the same.
Washington Post
"...Mexico now enters a perilous political moment. Mr. López Obrador, who as mayor was never shy about summoning his partisans to the streets, has called a mass demonstration today in Mexico City to protest what he calls the fraudulent election results. He has refused to concede defeat, suggesting that the results were cooked by entrenched insiders and institutions hostile to his candidacy -- and to his underprivileged constituents. And while his aides have issued assurances that he intends to act responsibly, his own unproven allegations of "manipulation" in the vote's tallying are worrying. While the results in some of the country's 130,000 ballot boxes seem to have been miscalculated -- as is the case in almost any election -- there is no sign so far of systematic attempts to falsify the outcome.
Mr. López Obrador is entitled to appeal the election results to the Federal Judicial Electoral Tribunal, an independent panel empowered to adjudicate such disputes that has ordered some state elections done over in recent years. He ought not use the power of his oratory, or the adulation of his followers, to nudge the country toward class warfare while he pursues a legal challenge that could last up to two months. To do so would hurt Mexico's international reputation and its allure to investors; it also could darken the 52-year-old Mr. López Obrador's political future..."
What Obrador should just give up and sit back like Gore did? No.
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