The 2006 Mexican presidential election was a real squeaker, but the winner was Felipe Calderon of the National Action Party (PAN) who edged out his rival Andres Manuel Lopez Calderon of the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) by about a quarter million votes (out of 41 million). Lopez Obrador still refuses to accept defeat, despite the fact that on September 5th, the federal Mexican electoral court declared Calderon the winner. That court was specifically designed to adjudicate electoral disputes, and has ruled in the past against all three major Mexican parties. Yet Lopez continues to claim the election was fraudulent. But looking at the evidence objectively, it's hard to see the justification for this view. In fact, many observers have called this election the cleanest in Mexico’s history. Ironically, it's also the most contested. Mexico has a very elaborate electoral system with witnesses from various parties. The two previous presidential elections (1994 and 2000) went smoothly. The Mexican registration system, in fact, is better than ours. In the U.S., most states don't even require photo ID and even illegal aliens can register to vote In Mexico all voters have photo IDs provided by the government, which are checked against a book in each polling station with the photo of every single voter.
As part of its deliberations, the electoral court had ordered a partial recount of the most disputed polling stations. The stations most disputed by the Lopez camp, in fact, which gave him the advantage. Nevertheless, they failed to find evidence of systematic fraud.
The bottom line is this election was very close. Lopez Obrador had 14, 683,096 votes, and was edged out by Calderon’s 14,916,927. That’s a real squeaker but in Mexican politics a candidate needs a plurality of votes, and not a majority. So Calderon is the winner. Yet Calderon hardly has a mandate, only 35.89% of those who turned out to vote voted for him. The election also reveals a divided Mexico. Lopez Obrador did better in the poorer south, and Calderon in the more prosperous north. Definitely Mexico’s president-elect has a hard road ahead of him. Lopez Obrador shows no signs of backing down, and Calderon may have to put up with protests for a long time.
Even more importantly, Calderon will have to continue the successful policies of the current administration while drastically improving on its failures. The Fox administration maintained the stability of the peso in relation to the dollar, and kept inflation down. However, Fox failed to make significant reforms. Calderon will need to maintain Mexico’s economic stability while at the same time increasing its economic growth, and helping more poor Mexicans to move into the middle class. If he can’t pull that off, it’s likely that by the time the next election rolls around, the hard left will win decisively, and there might not be any necessity to argue over who wins.
Allan Wall (allan39@prodigy.net.mx) recently returned from a tour of duty in Iraq currently resides in Mexico.
