Language

Yes, the situation is tense.

Submitted July 4, 2006 - 6:30 am by Jules Siegel
The items that you mention need to be examined, verified and interpreted.

If 900,000 voters were removed from the polls, did they then show up and demand to vote, for example? How did the lack of ballots at some special voting places disproportionately affect any given candidate? You presume that the majority wanted to vote for López Obrador. How do you know that's true? If the polls showed an almost equal split everywhere else are you arguing that people on the road were going to vote heavily for the PRD? They weren't all migrant workers. A lot of them were also business people and vacationers.

The same goes for the voters on the other side of the border. I remember reading at the time that it was assumed that many would vote for the PAN -- and that's why the law was passed.

In both cases, you need to show some kind before-the-fact evidence that the vote would have skewed one way or the other. Did the PRD take any action to force the IFE to make it easier for Mexicans living abroad to vote when they learned about the restrictions you mention?

My previous comments about the PRI were made in the context of a big win by the PRD, not a squeaker.

You were out there a while back there with the Zapatista caravan discouraging people from voting. Now you're all concerned about the voting process. In 2000, you were all for Fox and dumped on me as a chayote for calling him exactly what he was and what he turned out to be.

The PAN claims that it had a legal right to the lists in its possession, as did all other parties. Whether or not what they did with it is illegal remains to be established.

The claims about vote-shaving can't be sustained on the basis of a single district. They have to be verified across the board. Well, all the paper is there and it can be examined and shown to the public to prove the charges, if true. That's the route López Obrador is taking. It's the correct one and as a result, my confidence in him has gone up.

We all knew by the end of June this was going to be a close election, and we all knew that there would be claims of fraud if that turned out to be true. Now comes the real test. Can the IFE and the election court resolve the doubts to the satisfaction of the Mexican public? If it can't, the crisis begins.

Until then, it's just a close election with the very understandable claims of fraud and irregularities by the loser. Inflammatory statements by foreigners are out of place. You are already calling it a fraudulent election. I think you should let the facts came out in full before doing that.

Reply

Our Policy on Comment Submissions: Co-publishers of Narco News (which includes The Narcosphere and The Field) may post comments without moderation. All co-publishers comment under their real name, have contributed resources or volunteer labor to this project, have filled out this application and agreed to some simple guidelines about commenting.

Narco News has recently opened its comments section for submissions to moderated comments (that’s this box, here) by everybody else. More than 95 percent of all submitted comments are typically approved, because they are on-topic, coherent, don’t spread false claims or rumors, don’t gratuitously insult other commenters, and don’t engage in commerce, spam or otherwise hijack the thread. Narco News reserves the right to reject any comment for any reason, so, especially if you choose to comment anonymously, the burden is on you to make your comment interesting and relevant. That said, as you can see, hundreds of comments are approved each week here. Good luck in your comment submission!

The content of this field is kept private and will not be shown publicly.
  • Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.

More information about formatting options

User login