The Mexican cliff hanger

There is another cliff hanger going on, besides deciding who will play in the final of the World Cup: the Mexican election.

Now, before I comment further I would like to quote myself from a past posts last Sunday:

That is, be it Obrador or Calderon, the winner might not win by more than a meager 1%....

and

No matter what in Mexico there is no nonsense talk of new constitutions, brave new worlds, just RealPolitic adapted to the coming times but from two different angles. I would prefer Calderon to win just on the idea that he will be better suited at containing Chavez. But I doubt very much that Obrador will be a Chavez pushover. Obrador will lead a proud and progressive country and soon enough he will send Chavez packing with his nonsense: Mexico does not need Venezuela at all. While would Obrador put up with Chavez bad manners?

Thus before I write what comes below, it is important for me to show that last Sunday I was not particularly concerned about a possible Lopez Obrador victory. I have had enough Mexican acquaintances that if not pleased about AMLO, were not losing sleep over it, some even considering voting for AMLO.

Now, back to the cliff hanger.

The problem started when AMLO decided that he had won the election without letting the IFE finish its work, when the IFE announced Sunday night that it will be AT LEAST Wednesday before any statement about the winner could be emitted. That apparently was not received well as he came across for many as a sore loser. That does not bother me either, if he thinks he won, he certainly has the right to make sure he lost legitimately.

But this blogger who knows a little bit about Mexico had reported that there was a strong divide between North and South in Mexico, where the North favored much more Calderon than the South favored AMLO. That is, in the North Calderon was frequently receiving 2 to 1 victories whereas AMLO was receiving "normal" victories. Any one who would have bothered doing his/her homework on the PREP page would have realized that.

Thus on Sunday night, it seems that the first centers reporting where from major cities in the North and Calderon held an early lead (exit polls mostly, from a better organized North). that lead frittered away as the night advanced and the South reported. But at around 1 AM I had noticed that the bulk of missing data was from more remote areas of the North and I predicted that the erosion of Calderon would stop and he would remain on top. In fact, next day as the Calderon advance had gone down to just below 1%, it went back up to barely above 1% once the PREP closed its work, with most of Northern areas accounted.

That is when AMLO went on a rampage. But the IFE kept its cool and started yesterday the real count. That is, all the voting documents were going to be processed and matched with the documents annexed to the ballot boxes as these were going to be transferred to one of the 300 regional centers. When the IFE held documents were showing any inconsistency with the arriving documents, that box would be open and recounted. Not a complete recount, mind you, but already a systematic recount of all inconsistencies.

This time the scenario played in reverse: AMLO lead early and big, but his lead frittered away. Apparently the first districts to complete the official count were now from Mexico city and Southern cities. Northern official count was slower to come in because now the ballot boxes had more to travel, I suppose, than in the South. In fact there were reports of delays in PAN states as the PRD was contesting victories there! This morning I wake up to read that Calderon is up again! By the tiniest margin but up again: as I type with 99.18% counted Calderon lead by 0.35% which practically means that all that is left to count must go to AMLO for this one to win.

Well, that might well happen, but this is not the point. The point is that the IFE seems to have worked out splendidly in spite of a few glitches such as not having explained early enough in the preliminary count why 2.5 million votes had not been included. This gave the opportunity for AMLO to tarnish unnecessarily the process by assuming they had been tossed away. They had not, they had been set aside for verification but no one it seems had bothered explaining that as soon as it was observed. When included they improved AMLO result but still left Calderon on top, by the margin he seems to officially receive today.

To finish this post, AGAIN I must look at how other countries are handling electoral problems and I can only draw the conclusion that the Venezuelan CNE is COMPLETELY GEARED towards avoiding any real scrutiny, towards becoming a huge black box whose results cannot be verified in an independent way. We are still waiting for the official result of last December election. We still have huge doubts on August 2004, doubts that now will nev3r be resolved as all the ballot boxes have been destroyed. And more.

The point is that all actions of the CNE are geared towards not creating trust in the Venezuelan voter, and it does not matter how techniproficient the CNE tries to pretend to be, no one wants to vote in a system where controls are not properly set up, something that is now reported by all international observers, including the Carter Center. It is not enough that an electoral system is trusted by one side, it must be trusted by ALL SIDES and that is not happening at all in Venezuela. In fact, as time goes on, the CNE looks everyday more and more like a simple appendage of the government and elections an unnecessary exercise which most will skip next December. This is how democracies eventually expire. In Mexico, democracy is reviving as this AMLO/Calderon duel shows us.

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PS: notes added later.

A strong article against Obrador accused of a deliberate strategy to create a political crisis. What is noteworthy is that the writer, Ricardo Aleman, reminds the reader that some of the guys that scream fraud today where in the Salinas camp 12 years ago when this one stole the election to Cardenas. The ironies of history.... But the reader should be made aware AGAIN, that most of the PRD leadership today comes from the PRI, whereas the PAN is a real opposition of the PRI. That is, Obrador used to be a PRI hack in his young days (in Tabasco?) and he is probaly still thinking electorally today as he was thinkign then. Cada ladrón juzga por su condición.

In another note, journalists are already on track on the delaying tactics of the PRD to make sure that the favorable results came out first in the hope, one assumes, to further up the idea that Obrador is victim of fraud.

Maria Teresa Priego, an AMLO supporter, bemoans that her man was not up to the dignified challenge that crossed his path. In fact, she sounds equally disgusted by Calderon and Obrador....

UPDATE: at 8:31, Mexico time, 99.39% votes counted and Calderon advantage is 0.41%. That is, Obrador needs almost all the remaining votes to win. Statistically almost impossible.

UPDATE 2: AMLO decides to not recognize the result. Rather irresponsible if you ask me, if anything for the timing. But his move is clearly designed to do so BEFORE the IPE announces a final result that now will be unfavorable to his cause. The PRD seems to be mounting a discredit camapaign in the purest PRI tradition. One can only laugh at it!