There are 3 principle parties in Mexico (PRI, PAN & PRD), each of which heads several state governments.  Though the PRI, party (prounced pree, Institutional Revolutionary Party), in Mexico was dislodge from the Presidency (1929-2000) by the PAN, which then done as their opposition, committed election fraud in the 2006 presidential election—the cause for the current unrest.  The party has ruled the country for more than 70 years.  (Opponents, academics, and historians claim with ample evidence that elections were just a ritual to simulate the appearance of a democracy—wikipedia.org). A third party, the PRD’s has won, but for the fraud, the 06 election.  The article below is on the current theft and the PRD’s response–jk.

From www.gregpalast.com

MEXICO CITY: IT AIN’T OVER ‘TIL IT’S OVER

0 Comments Published by Greg Palast July 10th, 2006 in Articles

By Matt Pascarella

[Matt Pascarella is an award winning researcher and producer for investigative journalist Greg Palast. He is on assignment in Mexico covering the Presidential Election. To see pictures from Mexico]

While much of the world believes Felipe Calderon has been officially declared Mexico’s next President, it is not true. At least not yet.

(Mexico City) Last week the Electoral Commission, IFE, announced the results of a country-wide count of tally sheets - sheets that are attached to each ballot box - they found that Felipe Calderon (PAN) was ahead of Lopez Obrador (PRD) by around 0.5%. To Calderon, there is no question that he is the winner. But according to Lopez Obrador, he has won more votes.

TRIFE not IFE

Despite what both Calderon and Lopez Obrador tell their supporters and what you read in press reports, the next President has yet to be officially declared. IFE is not the body responsible for officially announcing the next President. Rather, it is TRIFE (Electoral Tribunal) that will make an official announcement by early September, after addressing complaints filed by each party. The parties have four days to file their objections following the results of the tally sheet count — which was concluded last Thursday.

Last night, the PRD, Lopez Obrador’s party, delivered their official complaint to the tribunal.

TRIFE, a supposedly non-partisan, independent body, has the responsibility to examine irregularities brought forth to them. TRIFE, will therefore, have to consider facts such as:

- Why hundreds of thousands of ballots have yet to be included in any count;

- Why ballots have been found, literally, in the trash;

- Why there was a massive amount of “drop-off”, i.e. where people showed up to vote but did not cast a vote for president;

- Why, on Election Day, Casilla workers in places like Queretaro and Salamanca were caught on video, stuffing ballot boxes and changing tally sheets.

- The use and role of public expenditures on Calderon’s campaign;

- The intervention of the current President, Vicente Fox (a member of PAN), which benefitted Calderon, during the campaign, and which is illegal according to the Electoral Commission’s rules.

Other allegations include:

- A recording of a telephone call between members of PRI (the dominant party in Mexico up until 2000) and members of PAN — which indicates they struck an alliance on Election Day when the results began filtering in, showing PRI was falling way behind.

- Evidence of Hilldebrand’s involvement in compiling voter lists to annul certain voters, as well as manipulation of the PREP, the preliminary election reporting program. (Hilldebrand, a company founded by Calderon’s brother-in-law, was, reportedly, hired by IFE to create the vote tallying software used in the PREP.)

are a few of the many anomalies not only recognized by the PRD complaint, but some of which that have already been observed by the Electoral Commission itself.

“Vota Por Vota, Casilla Por Casilla”

On Saturday nearly half a million people, of all ages and from as far away as Tabasco, gathered in Mexico City’s Zocalo, one of the largest squares in the world, for an “asemblea informative” (”informative assembly”) organized by the PRD. There were also other simultaneous assemblies throughout the country for people that could not make it to Mexico City. As the crowd waited for members of the PRD and Lopez Obrador himself to address them, they chanted, “Vota por vota, casilla, por casilla” (”Vote by vote, polling place, by polling place”).

A few hours earlier and a few blocks away in the Don Diego conference room at the Sheraton Hotel, a press conference was held by the PRD for members of the international press. Playing it smart politically (and likely not having enough evidence), Lopez Obrador refused to comment on foreign involvement with the election that would have benefited Calderon. Many of the questions lobbed at Lopez Obrador had to do with what his plans were for contesting the IFE results. In response, he stuck to what the party line has been since election night when it was too close to call: That they will take the legal route; that every vote should be counted; and that until that happens he refuses to concede.

Yet when Lopez Obrador addressed the assembly he announced a nation-wide mobilization to begin this Wednesday. The crowd, waving yellow flags and holding signs claiming fraud, shouted in response, “No esta solo” (”you are not alone”). Lopez Obrador asked that people from every state in Mexico begin marching, this Wednesday, to the Anthropology Museum in Mexico City, and then on Sunday, July 16th, gather at the Zocalo for another mass meeting. Lopez Obrador called for people to be calm and to not shut down roads, (which would cripple the Mexican economy) and that, ultimately, they would win together through the government’s own institutions.

“Irreversible triumph”

Two days before the meeting at the Zocalo, at PAN headquarters, Felipe Calderon gave a speech in which he said he has already won and that he will “be the best of all candidates.” Among a crowd of supporters, one woman holding up a poodle dressed in a Felipe Calderon sweater, Calderon was sharp and decisive despite the official announcement from TRIFE still pending. Earlier in the week, in a show of ironic “solidarity,” PAN officials offered to include Obrador in their cabinet.

Javier Arriaga Sanchez, a PAN spokesperson, said today that “Calderon’s victory is irreversible.”

PAN’s rhetoric, on the one hand, is that they trust IFE and TRIFE. Yet, on the other hand, they are saying it is irreversible and that Lopez Obrador is attacking the government’s well established institutions.

Regardless of political leanings, the PAN discourse can only be considered hypocritical and the argument against Lopez Obrador’s unwillingness to concede seems ridiculous given the close margin and reported rampant irregularities. After all, what would Calderon have to lose if all the votes, “vota por vota, casilla por casilla,” were counted? If he is so confident of his victory, the results should strengthen his legitimacy. But aside from that, and more importantly, in order to preserve Mexican democracy itself every vote should be counted.

The Long Haul

Messages of congratulations have been pouring into Calderon’s camp from various countries, including the U.S. And today, a spokesperson from the UN commented, “Isolated incidents are in no way motivation to de-authorize the election,” and that parties and citizens should not put into doubt the integrity of the elections. The Wall Street Journal, last week, went so far as to say that Lopez Obrador was “a sore loser.”

Despite the rhetoric from both parties, the messages of congratulations, the seals of approval, and the simply erroneous reporting in the press, the Mexican election will be determined by a process. There must be respect for this process on all sides, and in reporting on this issue, the process itself must be allowed to conclude — not only for the sake of declaring a legitimate president but for the sake of democracy itself.

López Obrador, Andrés Manuel

From Britannica.com, Year in Review 2005

During 2005 Andrés Manuel López Obrador, the popular head of Mexico's Federal District government, survived a politically motivated impeachment process and consolidated his position as the leading contender in the country's 2006 presidential contest.

López Obrador was born into a provincial middle-class family in Villa de Tepetitán, Tabasco, on Nov. 13, 1953. From 1972 to 1976 he studied political science and public administration at the National Autonomous University of Mexico.

López Obrador began his political career in Mexico's long-ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), eventually becoming Tabasco state party president in 1983. He left the party, however, and backed the dissident presidential candidacy of Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas in 1988. López Obrador's own 1988 opposition candidacy for Tabasco's governorship ended in defeat, but he later became state president of the party founded on the basis of Cárdenas's electoral coalition, the centre-left Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD).

During the 1990s López Obrador earned a national reputation for organizing grassroots protests against environmental damage in Tabasco caused by the state-owned Mexican Petroleum Company (PEMEX) and electoral fraud committed by the “official” PRI (most notably involving the 1994 Tabasco gubernatorial race, which he lost to 2005–06 PRI presidential candidate Roberto Madrazo Pintado). From 1996 to 1999 López Obrador served as national president of the PRD, a position he used both to promote grassroots party organization and to recruit prominent PRI members as PRD mayoral and gubernatorial candidates. In 2000 he was elected head of the Federal District government, a post he held through July 2005, when he resigned to seek the PRD's presidential nomination.

López Obrador compiled a generally successful record as head of Mexico City's government. Under the slogan “For the good of all, the poor first,” he promoted a series of innovative social and cultural programs (including old-age pensions, financial support for single mothers and the unemployed, substantial investments in urban redevelopment and transportation infrastructure, and educational outreach programs) that won him widespread popularity. Nevertheless, his record was marred by sensational corruption scandals involving several close subordinates, and public security remained a major challenge.

In May 2004 the federal attorney general initiated impeachment proceedings against López Obrador, charging him with having defied a court order by authorizing the construction of a hospital access road across private property. Mexican Pres. Vicente Fox argued that his administration sought only to uphold the rule of law, but many national and international observers believed that the underlying motive was to disqualify López Obrador as a presidential candidate. After nearly one million protesters marched through downtown Mexico City in April 2005, Fox finally ended the prolonged confrontation by dropping the impeachment charge.
Kevin J. Middlebrook

Review year 2005:

The triumph in the July 2, 2000, presidential election of Vicente Fox Quesada (see Biographies) was the single most important event in Mexico during the year. His dramatic victory ended the Institutional Revolutionary Party's (PRI's) 71-year-long dominance in national government and marked the beginning of a new political era.

By mobilizing unexpectedly broad support behind the Alliance for Change coalition (an alliance of the centre-right National Action Party [PAN] and the Mexican Green Ecologist Party [PVEM]), Fox won by a landslide over PRI candidate Francisco Labastida Ochoa. The official tally gave Fox 42.5% of the votes against Labastida's 36.1%. Three-time presidential candidate Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas Solórzano, heading the Alliance for Mexico coalition (an alliance of the centre-left Party of the Democratic Revolution [PRD], the Labour Party [PT], the Convergence for Democracy [CD], the Nationalist Society Party [PSN], and the Social Alliance Party [PAS]), trailed with 16.6%.

Because the PAN shared a number of macroeconomic objectives with the PRI, Fox's administration was not expected to radically alter national economic policy. Fox was committed to new investments in public education, however. He also stated the goal of creating 1,350,000 new jobs in the formal sector each year. Observers believed Fox would, moreover, pursue policies beneficial to small and medium-sized firms.

The PRI remained a potentially powerful force—with a large bloc of votes in the national Congress, control over the majority of state and municipal governments, and strong support among some social groups—but the party faced a prolonged internal leadership crisis and a difficult transition to its new role as opposition party.