Past Corruption and Voter Fraud incite civil unrest in Oaxaca

OAXACA - In the region of Oaxaca to the South of Mexico, diabolical schemes were used to frighten and discourage Mexican voters in poor areas. In fact, Rovian methods resemble those uncovered in the 2000 and 2004 U.S. presidential elections. Teachers involved in a yearly strike for 26 years and steelworkers joined with election protestors to call for the resignation of the governor, a member of the PRI party, who refused to negotiate and ordered tear-gas to dispel teachers.

This is a region that is excited about the fact that there could be a president who cares about the south and would be militant to defend Obrador. Residents of Oaxaca distrust the government and have reached a point that continued corruption is no longer acceptable.

The leftist Democratic Revolution Party (PRD) maintains that hundreds of polling stations showed more ballots cast than registered voters. Additionally, the business community and sectors of the Catholic Church aggressively campaigned against its candidate, Andres Lopez Obrador.

Alicia Alonso with Civic Alliance, a non-governmental election watchdog organization that formed part of the nearly 24,000 independent observers during the elections, told IPS that prior to July 2, her group found evidence that the Oportunidades social assistance program was being used to coerce people to vote for Calderon.

Alonso said that several weeks before the elections, Civic Alliance interviewed 11,500 beneficiaries of the Oportunidades program in 23 of Mexico's 31 states, and that respondents told them the authorities had made clear they had to vote for Calderon in order to keep their benefits.

Social Development Secretary Josefina Vasquez Mota stepped down on Jan. 6 to run Calderon's campaign. At that time, the opposition complained that the former official had full control of the registration lists of beneficiaries of public social assistance programs, which she denied.

According to Civic Alliance, Catholic priests in the northern state of Nuevo Leon backed Calderon's campaign platform and urged their faithful not to vote for candidates who advocated the decriminalization of abortion and laws that would benefit homosexuals -- an undisguised reference to Lopez Obrador.

The Civic Alliance also protested an offensive by the Business Coordinating Council (CCE) consisting of radio and TV spots against the left-leaning candidate, who was compared in the ads to Venezuela's leftist President Hugo Chavez and described as a threat to Mexico's stability.

On the night of the elections, the Federal Electoral Institute's (IFE) Preliminary Electoral Results Program (PREP), designed to carry out a quick vote count, showed that the race was extremely tight, but reflected statistical patterns that were questioned by experts.

Three days later, IFE declared Calderon the winner with a difference of 0.58 percent of the votes, although only the Electoral Court has the authority to announce the final outcome.

Victor Romero Rochin, a researcher at the National Autonomous University of Mexico's Physics Institute, and Bolivar Huerta, a science professor at the university, said PREP's vote tally reflected "atypical" and "unlikely" statistical patterns.

"Statistically speaking, the results fall outside of any reasonable pattern. Either there was meddling, or I don't know what happened," he said.

For his part, Huerto said the possibility that the PREP vote-counting software was targeted by a hacker should not be ruled out, given that "there is a lot of evidence of irregularities in the vote count." He suggested that a recount be carried out using a system other than the one employed by IFE, in order to guarantee transparency.

To back up his claim that he won the elections, Lopez Obrador presented video recordings in which it appears individuals (poll workers, according to the PRD) are illegally stuffing ballot boxes.

The leftist candidate said there are one and a half million extra votes that cannot be accounted for. To illustrate, he pointed out that in two voting precincts alone -- San Luis Potosi and Nuevo Leon -- the number of votes by far exceeded the number of registered voters.

In San Luis Potosi, 1,449 ballots were counted, although only 412 people were registered in that precinct, while in Nuevo Leún the votes totaled 960, even though there are just 603 names on the voting registry.

According to Lopez Obrador, the total number of ballots counted in favor of Calderon exceeded the real number of votes that he took.

IFE admitted last Sunday that inconsistencies in terms of the number of ballots were found in 95 percent of the 2,870 ballot boxes opened during the preliminary vote count on election day.

Sources: Inter Press Service, July 21, 2006 and Christian Science Monitor: July 21 and 25, 2006.