Mexico
City - The seven-judge panel known as the TRIFE, charged with deciding
the legitimacy of Mexico's murky July 2 election and confirming the new
president, is the nation's court of last resort. What the judges decree
is literally the last word, the end of the line; there is no appeal.
On
September 5, the last day the Constitution mandated the TRIFE to rule
on the most hotly contested balloting in Mexico's checkered electoral
history, the judges pronounced their verdict: Outgoing President
Vicente Fox's unconstitutional intervention in the electoral process on
behalf of his handpicked successor, Felipe Calderón, had put the
election "at risk."
Moreover,
the financing of months of commercial spots that labeled leftist Andrés
Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) "a danger for Mexico" by transnational and
national corporations was patently illegal and influenced voters.
The
electoral tribunal also noted that Calderón, the PAN candidate who had
been declared the winner by the much-criticized Federal Electoral
Institute (IFE) by a razor-thin .55 percent of
41.6 million votes cast, had been awarded tens of thousands of votes
that could not be substantiated. The TRIFE, in a partial recount of
less than 10 percent of the 130,000 precincts held two weeks before the
final decision, had annulled 237,000 votes, more than Calderón's
supposed margin of victory.
And
the winner was? Calderón, a 44-year-old former energy minister and the
scion of a founding PAN family. The party was birthed by Catholic
bankers to beat back "Bolshevik" President Lazaro Cardenas during the
Great Depression.
The
illogic of the TRIFE verdict inflamed several thousand AMLO supporters
gathered outside the tribunal's bunker in southern Mexico City.
"Fraude!"
"Rateros!"
(Fraud! Thieves!) they screamed, as the judges were escorted by
military police to their expensive vehicles. López Obrador had long
accused the seven judges of bowing to Fox government pressures in
exchange for personal benefit -- three of the TRIFE members are
expected to be promoted to the Supreme Court in the coming Calderón
administration.
López
Obrador points to the tribunal as a glaring example of Mexico's
corrupted judiciary and calls for a "radical renovation" of the
nation's institutions.
For
López Obrador, the confirmation of Calderón's disputed victory signals
the end of the line in a grueling, three-year struggle for the
presidency during which Fox and his attorney general repeatedly tried
to keep him off the ballot, even threatening to jail him on a
trumped-up contempt-of-court citation -- and the beginning of a new
stage of resistance to what the leftist characterizes as the imposition
of Calderón upon the nation.
That
resistance was graphically illustrated on September 1, when 155
senators and Congressional representatives of AMLO's three-party
"Coalition for the Good of All" seized the podium of the Mexican
Congress to prevent Fox from pronouncing his final State of the Union
address. The takeover was seen as a dress rehearsal for Calderón's
December 1 inauguration as Mexico's new president.
The
confrontation took place in an ambiance of high tension, with the
Congress surrounded by thousands of federal police and members of Fox's
presidential military guard. Ten-foot metal barricades and army
sharpshooters posted on nearby rooftops kept López Obrador's supporters
from gathering within shouting distance of the Congressional compound.
The
military is soon expected to evict tens of thousands of AMLO diehards
who have been encamped since July 30 on Mexico City's most traveled
thoroughfares and in the great Zócalo plaza, protesting the manipulated
election. In a prerecorded speech to the nation on the night of the
TRIFE's confirmation, Calderón went out of his way to praise the
Mexican military as one of the nation's most cherished institutions --
López Obrador has often called upon the generals not to allow the army
to be utilized in a political conflict against his people.
On
September 15, the eve of Mexican Independence Day, President Fox
intends to deliver the traditional "grito" of "Viva Mexico!" from the
balcony of the National Palace overlooking the Zócalo. AMLO's
supporters have vowed not to yield the plaza and to proclaim their own
grito to the nation on that day.
Another
flashpoint will come September 16, when a major military parade will be
staged to commemorate the 196th anniversary of Mexico's liberation from
Spain. López Obrador has summoned as many as 1 million delegates from
all over the country to converge on the Zócalo that day for a "National
Democratic Convention" that is expected to declare a "government in
resistance" and formulate strategies to prevent Calderón from ruling
for the next six years.
For
the new president, the task of governance will not be an easy one. The
country is divided in half geographically (Calderón won the industrial
north, López Obrador the highly indigenous, resource-rich south) and by
critical issues of class and race. The breach between the brown
underclass and the tiny white elite that Calderón represents will limit
his ability to institute the free-market neoliberal policies that his
campaign championed.
The
president-elect will no doubt seek to split AMLO's forces, offering
members of López Obrador's Congressional delegation minor Cabinet posts
and canonazos ("cannonades" of pesos) to neutralize the coalition's
strength in the new legislature, where it is now the second-largest
political force.
Calderón
cannot pass proposed constitutional changes such as the promised
privatization of the national petroleum monopoly PEMEX without a
two-thirds majority in both houses.
Calderón
is also expected to pump windfall profits from $70-a-barrel oil into
social programs to undercut López Obrador's deep support among the
underclass, an obligatory strophe for unpopular Mexican presidents.
As
was the case with Carlos Salinas after the long-ruling (seventy-one years)
PRI party stole the presidency for him back in 1988 from López
Obrador's onetime mentor and now archrival, Cuauhtemoc Cardenas,
Calderón will have more support outside Mexico than inside. Both George
Bush and US Ambassador Tony Garza were quick to congratulate Calderón
following the July 2 balloting. Now that the
TRIFE has confirmed his "victory," Washington and European Union
members -- like Spain's prime minister, Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero --
are eager to get in on the ground floor of the PEMEX fire sale and will
seek to legitimize Calderón's presidency beyond Mexico's borders.
But
within the boundaries of this distant neighbor nation, diminishing
AMLO's immense popularity and isolating him from his political base may
not be all that simple. Whenever challenged by the Fox administration,
López Obrador has been able to mobilize millions. Following the
disputed July 2 election he has organized the largest political
demonstrations in the history of the republic. Calderón's only option
may be mano dura, the "hard hand."
Fox's
attorney general, Carlos Abascal, has already warned that should López
Obrador form a parallel government, he could be tried for usurpation of
powers, a crime that carries a hefty prison sentence. López Obrador's
Party of the Democratic Revolution is being threatened with the loss of
its electoral registration for preventing Fox from delivering his State
of the Union address. But in the past, such threats have succeeded only
in boosting AMLO's numbers.
Indeed,
López Obrador's commitment to resisting the Calderón presidency could
well come down to eliminating his physical presence altogether. Such a
development has ample historical precedent in Mexican power politics.
In 1994 PRI presidential candidate Luis Donaldo
Colosio was gunned down after he turned against his predecessor,
Salinas. Agrarian martyr Emiliano Zapata met a similar fate in 1919
when he proved too troublesome for the Carranza government. One of
López Obrador's role models, Francisco Madero, was assassinated soon
after the stolen 1910 election that triggered the Mexican revolution
and eventually installed him as Mexico's first democratically elected
president.
