How do you think Al Gore would advise Lopez Obrador, the populist presidential candidate in Mexico that “lost” the recent presidential election by a very narrow half percentage point margin to Felipe Calderón, the corporate candidate and the choice of outgoing president Vincente Fox and the Bush administration to run Mexico’s government?
Would Gore tell Lopez to stand down and to concede defeat in the interest of keeping peace, that an aggressive challenge to the election results might result in civil unrest, violence and a weakened democracy?
Would he tell Obrador that he should concede in a gentlemanly fashion? Would he advise him that, until the next election his country can withstand four more years of rule by free trading corporate handmaidens? Those same lapdogs to the ministers of wealth and power who view invasions of other countries and toppling democratically elected leaders as a proper action to insure economic progress and to make sure access to natural resources, avoidance of environmental protection laws and cheap labor is not thwarted by those who favor sharing the wealth and the needs of the poor and the working class?
In an eerily similar scenario to the 2000 election which Gore “lost” the electoral vote to Bush by an even much smaller margin, Obrador’s lawyers failed to get a ruling allowing for a full recount of the votes approved by the courts because of a technical error when they filed their challenge. The courts seized this error to prevent a full recount. As a result there will only be a partial recount. Only 9% of the ballots will be recounted.
You would think, in the interests of democracy and producing a fair and just election, the courts would want nothing less than an accurate count so there is no question of which candidate is the rightful winner. You would think. But then you would be wrong if the courts rendering the decision were made up of those judges appointed by the previous corporatist president and “free trader”, Vincente Fox.
In the United States, Mexico, and other countries in this hemisphere and around the world, corporate profiteers armed with huge fortunes have gained control of the governments, the courts, and the voting process. Democracy has been undermined and the process subverted to assure that only those who support the corporate regimes can win.
Automated electronic voting machines, that are produced, managed and manipulated by the same corporate powers that own the elected officials, make it easier to make elections look close regardless of the actual vote. Courts of corporate-picked judges can protect against an accurate vote count and make any election final as we saw here in 2000 and again in 2004.
Okay, maybe Obrador’s wrong and Calderon won the election fairly, but if that’s the case, shouldn’t Calderon want it to be clear he has a mandate regardless of how thin?
There is only one thing for Obrador to do and that is to press the courts for a total recount and demand it be done under fair and unbiased supervision. "If they refuse to open all the polling stations and count all the votes, it is complete proof that we won the presidential election," he said. Because the margin was so small, Obrador and his supporters should settle for nothing less than a full recount. If they are refused then I say they should take a lesson from what happened here in the United States. To avoid complete corporate takeover he should force the country into civil unrest and anarchy if that is what is necessary to restore this fledgling democracy.
Gore’s fateful decision to stand down and not challenge Bush is a clear example of what Mexico can expect. If Obrador bows to the enemies of freedom and democracy in the interest of maintaining peace the evil empire will only gain more power and lead his country further back down the path to becoming an authoritarian police state as it once was not too many years ago.
If denied a fair and just full recount he should tell his supporters what Al Gore should have told his supporters but failed to. He should tell them unless we get a full and fair recount “the revolution starts now!”
