The Anti-Manichaeist

According to a recent article, the 1% initial victory margin of Conservative Mexican presidential candidate Felipe Calderon was quickly reduced to a .58% lead after a recount of 2.2% of the vote.  Now, they are doing a recount of 9% of the vote and there is an Orange Ukraine-style protesters in Mexico City.  The leftist candidate Lopez Obrador is calling for a complete recount and being slandered as “messianic” by the existing president Vicente Fox, who has not ruled out the use of force to clear away the protestors. 

The current lead is only 244,000 votes.  So far, after the first day of review, 406,099 votes have been recounted, and Lopez Obrador has gained 489 votes and Calderon lost 296.  So, since 40 million votes were cast, that would lead to a projection of Obrador gaining only 78,500 votes.  That wouldn’t change the outcome, but it might be enough to raise serious allegations of voting fraud and perhaps even corruption of the recounting process… 

The very significant reduction in the lead after the initial recount really opens up a can of worms…  All of which could end very poorly for Mexico.  Their election was really ugly with dirty campaigning and a big difference between the main candidates.  I honestly think that given the shring small nature of his lead, the wise thing would be for Calderon to take on a significant portion of the agenda of Obrador for the sake of keeping the peace.  He doesn’t want a revote or a massacre on his hands.  I don’t know how much the Mexican people have learned from the nonviolent protests of other parts of the world.  It takes strong leadership/discipline to prevent violence from breaking out on both sides. 

dlw