Oaxaca Voters Punish the PRI

By Nancy Davies
Commentary from Oaxaca

July 3, 2006

Why was this election in Oaxaca different from all other elections?

For one thing, the students at Radio Universidad, the station of the Benito Juarez Autonomous University of Oaxaca (UABJO in its Spanish initials) opened their phone lines for citizens to call in with accusations of electoral fraud throughout Election Day.

I monitored during one hour, from 2:15 to 3:15 P.M.. In that time eleven citizen calls from different areas of greater Oaxaca City were aired. Three reported that there were no ballots available: voters had been waiting three hours, six hours and seven hours, respectively. One caller said her credentials for voting were rejected. Four calls reported that the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) was handing out food and staples in exchange for votes. One reported that in the town of Zaachila nobody marked off names of those who had already voted.

And then there was a call saying that the state police barracks at Santa Maria Coyotepec held thousands of ballots which the troops were busily marking for distribution to the polls at the close of the day – a believable scenario given that so many polling places had “inadvertently” run out of ballots. The caller said his uncle, a police officer, just couldn’t bring himself to do it and blew the whistle. The uncle said the police had been working for three days to mark the ballots. The caller’s voice wavered with emotion as he described his uncle’s information.

As Radio Universidad announced each of the possible trouble spots, the public was urged to get there with video cameras, personal cameras, and cell-phone cameras, to document the potential fraud. And they did.

Citizens responded to the marked ballots by surrounding the police quarters into the evening, to prevent the transfer of the stolen ballots, neatly marked for the PRI, to closed polls. The newspaper Noticias featured the story on its front page July 3, adding details of how people stood outside the police building shouting, “fraud, fraud”.

In other polling sites citizens refused to permit officials to take away boxes of marked ballots without the presence of an official from every party –i.e., if the opposition Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) wasn’t represented. Governor Ulises Ruiz Ortiz’ boast – that he would delivering a million votes for Madrazo – failed.

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