Mexico City – Mexico’s top electoral court on Friday scheduled its first public session in the country’s disputed presidential race, with the court’s seven judges expected to take up allegations of fraud and demands for a ballot-by-ballot recount.
The session, scheduled to begin Saturday morning, will give this divided nation its first look at how the Federal Electoral Tribunal plans to deal with leftist candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador’s allegations of widespread fraud and dirty campaign practices in the July 2 election.
Lopez Obrador is demanding a full recount that he says will show he was the race’s true winner. An official count gave ruling party candidate Felipe Calderon an advantage of less than 0.6 percent, or about 240,000 votes.
The tribunal has until Sept. 6 to declare a president-elect or annul the elections entirely.
The tribunal’s seven judges will begin by ruling on 174 allegations of fraud, filed by Lopez Obrador’s lawyers. Those rulings will likely determine whether they will order a full or partial recount.
Gerardo Fernandez, a spokesman for Lopez Obrador’s Democratic Revolution Party, said he expected the court to decide on the party’s request for a recount sometime before Monday, but he added that party officials didn’t have any indication of how the court would rule.
He warned against a partial recount, arguing that a full recount was the only way to put an end to allegations of fraud and questions about the country’s electoral system.
Representatives for Calderon were not immediately available for comment. Calderon has said he believes the elections were clean and fair, and he argues that a recount would violate a Mexican law that allows polling place results to be reopened only when there is evidence of irregularities.
Lopez Obrador’s party won a small victory late Monday when the tribunal voted unanimously to consider a possible recount.
But it dealt an apparent blow to the candidate’s “shotgun” strategy of citing thousands of irregularities at the 130,000 polling places, saying it would not roll all the legal challenges into a single case, but would consider each on its own merits.
The race was the closest presidential contest in Mexican history, dividing the nation along class and social lines.
Lopez Obrador has promised to govern for the poor, while Calderon has the backing of the nation’s growing middle and elite classes, many of whom want to protect the new homes and cars they have been able to purchase with falling interest rates.
Supporters of Lopez Obrador have seized control of the city’s cultural and financial heart, setting up protest camps on the elegant Reforma Avenue and in the city’s main Zocalo plaza and snarling traffic for nearly a week.
Braving nearly nightly rainstorms and even flooding, they say they won’t leave until the tribunal rules on their demands for a recount.
Protester Maria Elena de Mesa Sanchez, a 59-year-old preschool teacher, cautiously welcomed Saturday’s public session, but complained about the court’s “slowness, given the national unrest caused by the election’s irregularities.” Many have begun to question Mexico’s electoral system, held up to the world as a model for emerging democracies after President Vicente Fox’s historic victory in 2000 ended 71 years of one-party rule. Electoral officials have defended their work, and most election observers said the vote was fair.
But de Mesa isn’t convinced.
“I hope that they don’t let me down,” she said of the tribunal’s seven judges. “I’m waiting for a response that will satisfy the people.”
