Mexico City – Even as he challenges Mexico’s presidential election in court, leftist candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador is waging a public struggle to mold Mexican public opinion.
Instead of legal briefs, the weapons of this parallel campaign include conspiracy theories involving secret telephone recordings, undercover videos of alleged voting irregularities and the threat that his supporters will foment social instability.
Like the court challenge, the goal is to force a vote-by-vote recount of the 41 million ballots cast July 2.
Felipe Calderon of the conservative, ruling National Action Party won an official tally by just 0.6 percentage points, or about 240,000 votes. Lopez Obrador has challenged the results before Mexico’s Federal Electoral Tribunal, which has until Sept. 6 to announce its ruling.
Ernesto Isunza, political analyst at a Mexico City research institute, said Lopez Obrador’s political strategy has succeeded in redefining the dispute.
“The debate isn’t who won or lost the election,” he said. “The national debate is whether or not to reopen the ballots.”
Many independent observers, and even some Calderon supporters, now say a recount may be the only way to dispel the dark cloud of doubt that has formed over the closest election in Mexican history.
“The elections were substantially correct,” said writer Carlos Fuentes in an interview published in an Italian newspaper. “But since the difference is minimal, we all need to make an effort so that there isn’t a shadow over the new president. We need to eliminate any doubt over the result.”
Lopez Obrador has spent the past week planting such seeds of doubt in the public’s mind. In addition to presenting discrepancies in the vote tallies and pointing to uncounted ballots, he has taken Mexico down a rabbit hole of conspiracy theories.
In a dramatic display Saturday during a massive rally in downtown Mexico City, Lopez Obrador played phone recordings he said proved a plot between rival parties to deny him the presidency.
On Monday, he presented a grainy video he insisted showed ballot stuffing on election day. Election officials said the video in fact showed an election worker putting misplaced ballots in their correct box.
On Tuesday he held another news conference to play two more recordings that he claimed proved irregularities.
