Mexico City – Mexico will be calm if authorities agree to a vote-by-vote recount of ballots from the July 2 presidential election, the defeated leftist candidate said Tuesday, but instability looms if his conservative opponent is “imposed” on the country.
“If they want to snatch the victory away from me through foul means, I won’t allow it,” Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said in a radio interview.
“What suits Mexico is for there to be a vote-by-vote recount, I’m not talking about nullifying the elections,” said the leftist, who is challenging an official tally that gave conservative Felipe Calderon the victory in the July 2 election by the razor-thin margin of 0.58 percent.
Lopez Obrador said that a recount will take no more than two weeks and can be conducted in “sight of everyone, even with video cameras, and with that the country is calm.”
But, he continued, “if they want to win by foul means and impose the candidate of the right, apart from the fact that we would be talking about an illegitimate president, they will generate much political, economic and social instability.”
The leftist also reiterated what he told a Sunday rally that organizers claimed drew nearly 1 million people to Mexico City’s Zocalo plaza, that he plans to lead a campaign of “peaceful civil resistance” to protest the election results.
Asked if he feared that further protests might spill over into violence, Lopez Obrador said: “It doesn’t scare me because I have respect for the people, they always act responsibly.”
In that context, he rejected as unjustifiable an incident earlier Tuesday in which eight people surrounded Calderon’s vehicle and shouted abuse at the conservative as he left a meeting in Mexico City.
“What’s happening is regrettable,” Lopez Obrador said, adding that “the best way to resolve this issue is a recount.”
Calderon, meanwhile, reacted to his encounter with the protesters by proclaiming his faith in dialogue and peace over insults and violence.
“Bloody swine!,” shouted eight hecklers – five of them women – as they tried to surround Calderon’s SUV outside a building in the capital, with one of the group venturing to pound on the vehicle before it pulled away.
“My conviction is that work overcomes provocation and that the strength of the peaceful one will prevail over that of the violent,” Calderon said later.
“The strength of Mexico is that of the citizens who democratically and freely decide their future, as they did on July 2,” he said.
Calderon insists he is not afraid of a manual recount, but says that Lopez Obrador has no right trying to overturn the conservative’s victory through street protests.
“Let no one try to win in the streets what he did not achieve at the polling places,” Calderon, the standard-bearer of the incumbent National Action Party, said Monday night. “The decision that the people already made by way of the ballot box must be respected.”
“I do not have any fear. I’ve said it and I’ll repeat it: If the Electoral Tribunal finds legal cause and sufficient justification to recount the votes, in the specific cases where it is warranted, then let that be done,” he said. “It will only serve to corroborate the convincing victory we obtained.”
The Federal Electoral Tribunal, now examining Lopez Obrador’s allegations of widespread irregularities and fraud, has until Aug. 31 to rule on the legal challenges, and until Sept. 6 to declare a president-elect.
“I refuse to accept blackmail and threats,” Calderon told reporters. “I have struggled all my life so that Mexico might have free elections, and for that reason I will continue defending the vote of Mexicans.”
A top official in the Lopez Obrador campaign, Sen. Jesus Ortega, bristled Tuesday at Calderon’s choice of words.
“There is no blackmail. We are convinced there were multiple irregularities that must be corrected. It’s hardly blackmail to use the resources the law provides us to lodge a protest,” the senator said.
Some observers have noted that Calderon’s own party has in the past resorted to demonstrations when the once-dominant PRI tried to cheat the conservatives at the ballot box, notably in 1991, when current President Vicente Fox led big protests against efforts to deny him the governorship of his native state of Guanajuato.
Calderon, a former energy secretary favored by business, and Lopez Obrador are vying to succeed Fox for a six-year term set to begin in December.
Most observers, including those from outside the country, rated Mexico’s presidential election as free and fair. But the watchdog group Civic Alliance said last week there was “sufficient” cause for a vote-by-vote recount to ensure transparency, citing “irregularities” at 2,400 of the country’s 130,477 polling places.
