Saturday, August 12, 2006
The Recount: Reading Between the Lines
LINK: http://blog.washingtonpost.com/mexicovotes/2006/08/the_recount_reading_between_th_1.html
Sometimes in Mexico you need to read several versions of the same story to make an educated guess as to what exactly is going on. Such is the case with the recount taking place in more than 11,000 polling places across the country.
Judging from the front-page coverage in the tabloid La Jornada, the errors in the tabulations of the July 2 presidential vote seem endless.
But coverage by El Universal is more subdued, referring to minor tally errors being discovered in the first day of the recount:
"Officials reviewing ballots at a district office in the northern city of Monterrey took more than an hour to count the first of 100 ballot boxes, said Raúl González, a PRD representative helping monitor the tally. 'It's going very slowly," said González. He predicted the count would take four days. At a district office in Guadalupe, Nuevo León, outside of Monterrey, party officials disagreed on what recount results showed.
"'There are normal errors both for them and for us,' Francisco Javier Bustillos, a National Action Party representative, said in an interview at the district office."
Campaign Cónexion suggests reading the coverage and then, to borrow from Bill Clinton, triangulate. Somewhere in the middle of all that is the reality of the situation.
Here's what we know:
* Conservative Felipe Calderón, selling himself as the logical extension of President Vicente Fox, won the initial count in the July 2 election by about 240,000 votes.
* His leftist rival, former Mexico City mayor Andrés Manuel López Obrador, filed a 900-page document alleging massive fraud.
* Mexico's election tribunal ordered a recount of about 9 percent of the total votes cast -- or 4 million votes. The counting (is re-counting a word?) began Wednesday, under the watchful eyes of 180 magistrates, party representatives and reporters who were permitted into some polling places.
It can be awfully slow going, as James C. McKinley Jr. reports from Zapopan.
"At the Sixth Election District in Jalisco, the magnitude of even a partial re-tallying of votes was evident. After five hours of work, Magistrate José Manuel Mojica, a soft-spoken avuncular man with gray hair and mustache, had managed to get through only 3 of the 247 packets to be opened," McKinley reported in the New York Times. "The judge sat at a green covered table with two lawyers, one representing Mr. López Obrador and one Mr. Calderón, while the head of the election district and one of the local board members counted ballots by hand. A secretary took notes.
"Several problems arose, causing the judge to rub his forehead. In one polling place, 100 fewer ballots were accounted for than were delivered to the poll workers. 'I'm missing a lot of ballots,' the judge told the lawyers."
The tribunal has insisted that the recount be finished by Sunday evening. Although several newspapers are reporting results of the recount each day, the seven judges said no results will be official until they have completed trials weighing the fraud complaints for each district.
Yes, this means Mexico's never-ending presidential election may ruin yet another weekend.
Spinning the Recount
Though no great friend of the press, López Obrador has turned to the venerable Gray Lady to argue his case in the international court of public opinion. In an op-ed published Friday, he writes:
"The largest demonstrations in our history are daily proof that millions of Mexicans want a full accounting of last month's presidential election. ... Unfortunately, the electoral tribunal responsible for ratifying the election results thwarted the wishes of many Mexicans and refused to approve a nationwide recount. Instead, their narrow ruling last Saturday allows for ballot boxes in only about 9 percent of polling places to be opened and reviewed.
"This is simply insufficient for a national election where the margin was less than one percentage point - and where the tribunal itself acknowledged evidence of arithmetic mistakes and fraud, noting that there were errors at nearly 12,000 polling stations in 26 states."
The former mayor of Mexico City used his Times piece to invoke activist leaders such as Martin Luther King Jr. and Gandhi to reiterate his call for a full recount: "After all, our aim is to strengthen, not damage, Mexico's institutions, to force them to adopt greater transparency. Mexico's credibility in the world will only increase if we clarify the results of this election."
For a fuller -- albeit decidedly opinionated -- assessment of López Obrador, turn to the writings of George Grayson, a professor at the College of William and Mary. In Friday's Wall Street Journal, Grayson, author of "Mesias Mexicano," recounts López Obrador's childhood in the state of Tabasco, his five years running an institute focused on indigenous peoples and his ingenious "exodus" marches in the early 1990s:
"These Exodus marches catapulted the PRD visionary onto the national stage and impelled his election as national PRD president in 1996. Four years later, he captured the Mexico City mayorship and immediately began to refer to the capital as 'the City of Hope.' There he became the consummate populist caudillo.
"Mr. López Obrador is losing ground even in his own party as a growing number of PRD officials fear that his methods reinforce the image of the left as irresponsible radicals. Still, he truly believes that he is the savior of the downtrodden and he will continue his antics, which he insists are justified because of Mexico's widespread misery. Mr. Calderón's best bet to neutralize the messianic politician will be a policy agenda to spur robust growth and eat away at the poverty that afflicts nearly half of the country's 107.5 million people."
Everyone Has Something to Say
Political rhetoric in the post-election era has not been limited to the candidates. A new analysis by Dan Lund, president of the Mexico-based Lund Americas research company, finds that private corporations are among the most aggressive--and least regulated--political advertisers:
"While the (electoral commission), the PAN, and the Federal Government spots tend to promote their sponsors and indirectly attack the opposition, the private sector spots are 'completely non-party and profoundly political,' in the words of the Society en Movement web site. Eight minute ads on prime time explain how the July 2nd election was 'practically' immune from fraud by virtue of citizen participation, and that in fact the vote-by-vote, casilla-by-casilla count has already been completed.
"Speaking in the name and with the 'voices' of the casilla citizen participants and the people themselves, the ad shamelessly appropriates the inked thumb logo character of the IFE to explain the current situation."
The political parties too are purchasing more advertising time and putting out their best spinmeisters. From Calderón's National Action Party, or PAN, comes the insightful observation that the errors discovered so far are "ordinary and reasonable."
López Obrador's Democratic Revolutionary Party, or PRD, says that the discovery of even the smallest of problems is evidence of the need for the full recount he has demanded for more than a month.
"López Obrador needs to recover an average of 20 missing votes in each precinct to change the result - an outcome many election experts see as unlikely," according to the Houston Chronicle. "We have the obligation to defend democracy and everything that this implies," López Obrador wrote in an open letter distributed Wednesday.
Experts in Mexico appear divided over how the tribunal will react if significant irregularities are discovered in the partial recount.
"In its decision Saturday, the tribunal appeared to close the door on a full recount, with justices saying the law allowed the recounting of ballots only at polling stations that appeared to have made arithmetic errors or shown other irregularities," reports Sam Enriquez in the Los Angeles Times.
In a live chat with Campaign Cónexion Wednesday, legal scholar John Ackerman agreed that it appears the tribunal is leaning against a full recount. But he sees real danger in not doing so: "This is highly problematic because if serious irregularities are discovered in the partial recount there will be increased social demands for a full recount. But, in this case, pretty much the only option the justices have left for themselves is to "annul" or simply not declare the election valid and call for new elections."
Not surprisingly, the PRD is continuing to press for a full recount: "López Obrador himself rejected the whole idea of the partial recount, and repeated his vow that he will never allow the 'imposition' of a fraudulently elected president. Speaking to supporters Wednesday night in Mexico City's Zócalo, the PRD candidate also blasted most of the major media for waging a 'disinformation campaign' and 'accepting the role of pimps for the political right.'"
Supporters of Andres Manuel López Obrador protest outside Mexico's Treasury Secretary building in Mexico City earlier today. The man's sign reads, "Vote for Vote and Poll for Poll". (Reuters)
With each day, AMLO and his followers become more creative, or sinister, depending on your point of view. On Wednesday, demonstrators blocked entrances to three of the five largest banks here.
"The Association of Mexican Banks, in an e-mailed statement, urged authorities to keep the demonstrations within the limits of the law and prevent protests from affecting the rights of others," according to a wire service roundup in the Miami Herald's Mexico City edition. "Roy Caple, a spokesman for HSBC in Mexico City, said in a telephone interview the bank was operating normally.
"On Tuesday López Obrador supporters took over tollbooths on four federal highways, allowing drivers to pass through free of charge. Since July 30 protesters have blocked 12 kilometers of Mexico City's main avenue, filling the eight-lane boulevard with tents. Hotels and businesses in the area have lost about 1.5 billion pesos (US$138 million) because of the protests, the local chamber of commerce said Wednesday."
Much of the chattering class -- as well as many workers -- are fed up with the civil disobedience. But columnist Jesus Ortega Martinez argues that even though this is the largest recount ordered by the tribunal in its history, it is still insufficient to quell uncertainties surrounding the election.
Getting to Know the Neighbors
Senior Calderón adviser Arturo Sarakhan spoke at the National Press Club in Washington earlier this week and attempted to debunk what he described as many "myths" about his man, Mexico's electoral system and the legality of a total recount. Sarakhan reminded the audience that Calderón, who embraces the nickname "disobedient son," was not Fox's choice. But he won the PAN nomination. Second, Sarakhan noted, Calderón trailed López Obrador in most polls for most of the campaign, yet appears to have won.
"It seems easy to forget that, since 1994, Mexico, Mexican society, Mexican political parties of all persuasions, including Mr. López Obrador's PRD, put into motion what is probably one of the most efficient, successful, widely recognized electoral systems and laws and regulations anywhere in the world today."
-- Ceci Connolly
Sometimes in Mexico you need to read several versions of the same story to make an educated guess as to what exactly is going on. Such is the case with the recount taking place in more than 11,000 polling places across the country.
Judging from the front-page coverage in the tabloid La Jornada, the errors in the tabulations of the July 2 presidential vote seem endless.
But coverage by El Universal is more subdued, referring to minor tally errors being discovered in the first day of the recount:
"Officials reviewing ballots at a district office in the northern city of Monterrey took more than an hour to count the first of 100 ballot boxes, said Raúl González, a PRD representative helping monitor the tally. 'It's going very slowly," said González. He predicted the count would take four days. At a district office in Guadalupe, Nuevo León, outside of Monterrey, party officials disagreed on what recount results showed.
"'There are normal errors both for them and for us,' Francisco Javier Bustillos, a National Action Party representative, said in an interview at the district office."
Campaign Cónexion suggests reading the coverage and then, to borrow from Bill Clinton, triangulate. Somewhere in the middle of all that is the reality of the situation.
Here's what we know:
* Conservative Felipe Calderón, selling himself as the logical extension of President Vicente Fox, won the initial count in the July 2 election by about 240,000 votes.
* His leftist rival, former Mexico City mayor Andrés Manuel López Obrador, filed a 900-page document alleging massive fraud.
* Mexico's election tribunal ordered a recount of about 9 percent of the total votes cast -- or 4 million votes. The counting (is re-counting a word?) began Wednesday, under the watchful eyes of 180 magistrates, party representatives and reporters who were permitted into some polling places.
It can be awfully slow going, as James C. McKinley Jr. reports from Zapopan.
"At the Sixth Election District in Jalisco, the magnitude of even a partial re-tallying of votes was evident. After five hours of work, Magistrate José Manuel Mojica, a soft-spoken avuncular man with gray hair and mustache, had managed to get through only 3 of the 247 packets to be opened," McKinley reported in the New York Times. "The judge sat at a green covered table with two lawyers, one representing Mr. López Obrador and one Mr. Calderón, while the head of the election district and one of the local board members counted ballots by hand. A secretary took notes.
"Several problems arose, causing the judge to rub his forehead. In one polling place, 100 fewer ballots were accounted for than were delivered to the poll workers. 'I'm missing a lot of ballots,' the judge told the lawyers."
The tribunal has insisted that the recount be finished by Sunday evening. Although several newspapers are reporting results of the recount each day, the seven judges said no results will be official until they have completed trials weighing the fraud complaints for each district.
Yes, this means Mexico's never-ending presidential election may ruin yet another weekend.
Spinning the Recount
Though no great friend of the press, López Obrador has turned to the venerable Gray Lady to argue his case in the international court of public opinion. In an op-ed published Friday, he writes:
"The largest demonstrations in our history are daily proof that millions of Mexicans want a full accounting of last month's presidential election. ... Unfortunately, the electoral tribunal responsible for ratifying the election results thwarted the wishes of many Mexicans and refused to approve a nationwide recount. Instead, their narrow ruling last Saturday allows for ballot boxes in only about 9 percent of polling places to be opened and reviewed.
"This is simply insufficient for a national election where the margin was less than one percentage point - and where the tribunal itself acknowledged evidence of arithmetic mistakes and fraud, noting that there were errors at nearly 12,000 polling stations in 26 states."
The former mayor of Mexico City used his Times piece to invoke activist leaders such as Martin Luther King Jr. and Gandhi to reiterate his call for a full recount: "After all, our aim is to strengthen, not damage, Mexico's institutions, to force them to adopt greater transparency. Mexico's credibility in the world will only increase if we clarify the results of this election."
For a fuller -- albeit decidedly opinionated -- assessment of López Obrador, turn to the writings of George Grayson, a professor at the College of William and Mary. In Friday's Wall Street Journal, Grayson, author of "Mesias Mexicano," recounts López Obrador's childhood in the state of Tabasco, his five years running an institute focused on indigenous peoples and his ingenious "exodus" marches in the early 1990s:
"These Exodus marches catapulted the PRD visionary onto the national stage and impelled his election as national PRD president in 1996. Four years later, he captured the Mexico City mayorship and immediately began to refer to the capital as 'the City of Hope.' There he became the consummate populist caudillo.
"Mr. López Obrador is losing ground even in his own party as a growing number of PRD officials fear that his methods reinforce the image of the left as irresponsible radicals. Still, he truly believes that he is the savior of the downtrodden and he will continue his antics, which he insists are justified because of Mexico's widespread misery. Mr. Calderón's best bet to neutralize the messianic politician will be a policy agenda to spur robust growth and eat away at the poverty that afflicts nearly half of the country's 107.5 million people."
Everyone Has Something to Say
Political rhetoric in the post-election era has not been limited to the candidates. A new analysis by Dan Lund, president of the Mexico-based Lund Americas research company, finds that private corporations are among the most aggressive--and least regulated--political advertisers:
"While the (electoral commission), the PAN, and the Federal Government spots tend to promote their sponsors and indirectly attack the opposition, the private sector spots are 'completely non-party and profoundly political,' in the words of the Society en Movement web site. Eight minute ads on prime time explain how the July 2nd election was 'practically' immune from fraud by virtue of citizen participation, and that in fact the vote-by-vote, casilla-by-casilla count has already been completed.
"Speaking in the name and with the 'voices' of the casilla citizen participants and the people themselves, the ad shamelessly appropriates the inked thumb logo character of the IFE to explain the current situation."
The political parties too are purchasing more advertising time and putting out their best spinmeisters. From Calderón's National Action Party, or PAN, comes the insightful observation that the errors discovered so far are "ordinary and reasonable."
López Obrador's Democratic Revolutionary Party, or PRD, says that the discovery of even the smallest of problems is evidence of the need for the full recount he has demanded for more than a month.
"López Obrador needs to recover an average of 20 missing votes in each precinct to change the result - an outcome many election experts see as unlikely," according to the Houston Chronicle. "We have the obligation to defend democracy and everything that this implies," López Obrador wrote in an open letter distributed Wednesday.
Experts in Mexico appear divided over how the tribunal will react if significant irregularities are discovered in the partial recount.
"In its decision Saturday, the tribunal appeared to close the door on a full recount, with justices saying the law allowed the recounting of ballots only at polling stations that appeared to have made arithmetic errors or shown other irregularities," reports Sam Enriquez in the Los Angeles Times.
In a live chat with Campaign Cónexion Wednesday, legal scholar John Ackerman agreed that it appears the tribunal is leaning against a full recount. But he sees real danger in not doing so: "This is highly problematic because if serious irregularities are discovered in the partial recount there will be increased social demands for a full recount. But, in this case, pretty much the only option the justices have left for themselves is to "annul" or simply not declare the election valid and call for new elections."
Not surprisingly, the PRD is continuing to press for a full recount: "López Obrador himself rejected the whole idea of the partial recount, and repeated his vow that he will never allow the 'imposition' of a fraudulently elected president. Speaking to supporters Wednesday night in Mexico City's Zócalo, the PRD candidate also blasted most of the major media for waging a 'disinformation campaign' and 'accepting the role of pimps for the political right.'"
Supporters of Andres Manuel López Obrador protest outside Mexico's Treasury Secretary building in Mexico City earlier today. The man's sign reads, "Vote for Vote and Poll for Poll". (Reuters)
With each day, AMLO and his followers become more creative, or sinister, depending on your point of view. On Wednesday, demonstrators blocked entrances to three of the five largest banks here.
"The Association of Mexican Banks, in an e-mailed statement, urged authorities to keep the demonstrations within the limits of the law and prevent protests from affecting the rights of others," according to a wire service roundup in the Miami Herald's Mexico City edition. "Roy Caple, a spokesman for HSBC in Mexico City, said in a telephone interview the bank was operating normally.
"On Tuesday López Obrador supporters took over tollbooths on four federal highways, allowing drivers to pass through free of charge. Since July 30 protesters have blocked 12 kilometers of Mexico City's main avenue, filling the eight-lane boulevard with tents. Hotels and businesses in the area have lost about 1.5 billion pesos (US$138 million) because of the protests, the local chamber of commerce said Wednesday."
Much of the chattering class -- as well as many workers -- are fed up with the civil disobedience. But columnist Jesus Ortega Martinez argues that even though this is the largest recount ordered by the tribunal in its history, it is still insufficient to quell uncertainties surrounding the election.
Getting to Know the Neighbors
Senior Calderón adviser Arturo Sarakhan spoke at the National Press Club in Washington earlier this week and attempted to debunk what he described as many "myths" about his man, Mexico's electoral system and the legality of a total recount. Sarakhan reminded the audience that Calderón, who embraces the nickname "disobedient son," was not Fox's choice. But he won the PAN nomination. Second, Sarakhan noted, Calderón trailed López Obrador in most polls for most of the campaign, yet appears to have won.
"It seems easy to forget that, since 1994, Mexico, Mexican society, Mexican political parties of all persuasions, including Mr. López Obrador's PRD, put into motion what is probably one of the most efficient, successful, widely recognized electoral systems and laws and regulations anywhere in the world today."
-- Ceci Connolly
# posted by Nancy T. @ 3:34 AM 
