Democracy Betrayed: Electoral Fraud and Rebellion in Mexico

The reason Fox and his National Action Party (PAN) pulled out all the stops to steal the election is quite simple-they are desperately afraid of the growing class rebellion by Mexico's poor and oppressed. The campaign slogan of Lopez Obrador was straight forward: "For the good of all, the poor first." In a country where almost half the population lives below the poverty line Lopez Obrador pledged to provide a stipend to the elderly and health care for the poor. Millions of jobs will also be created, particularly by undertaking large construction projects to modernize Mexico's dilapidated transportation system. He also promised to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement with the United States, particularly the clauses that allow the importation of cheap subsidized grains that undermine Mexico's peasant producers.

More importantly Lopez Obrador pledged to break up the corrupt economic relationship that exists between the business class and government bureaucrats. Everyone in Mexico knows that bribes and kick backs are common place throughout Mexico as much of the country's wealth is skimmed off at the expense of the workers and the poor. This system existed under the previous governments of the Institutional Revolutionary Party, the PRI. What has made the system particularly insidious under the PAN is that it, more than the PRI, is the party of an entrenched business elite. Before becoming president, Vincente Fox himself built up a huge personal fortune, even serving as the head of Coca Cola in Mexico. Not only is Lopez Obrador threatening to break up the system of inside favors and corruption, he is also proclaiming that the rich will have to pay the income and business taxes that they routinely avoid.

This evidence of fraud in the election is overwhelming. Thanks to the Internet the most revealing details of what happened are being produced by the on-line, dissident press. As Luis Hernandez Navarro, a senior editor of the Mexican daily, La Jornada, told me, "the electoral process was rigged before, during and after the election on July 2." (See his editorial http://www.jornada.unam.mx/2006/07/04/021a1pol.php ) In addition to Navarro's coverage, the excellent source that explains the electoral fraud with detailed statistics, documents and charts is written by Al Giordano in The Narco-News Bulletin. In his latest article he demonstrates that Lopez Obrador actually won the presidential election by a million votes. (See http://www.narconews.com/Issue42/article1967.html )

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