CSMS Magazine EditorialMore than 200,000 demonstrators filled the famous Mexico City’s famous Zocalo plaza this Saturday, demanding the election results be overturned. According to several news agencies, Mexico appears to headed for a major polarization, a sharpening of class divide between the powerful elite with all the security establishment behind it and the vast majority of the impoverished lower class, including the forever neglected indigenous population that lives in the south.Late yesterday, the election commission announced the official results and certified Felipe Calderon, the conservative candidate, the winner. It was a chocker to many, especially the vast majority of the impoverished population who braved all kinds of obstacles to reach polling stations to cast their vote for Manuel Lopez Obrador, former mayor of Mexico and candidate of the leftist movement. “We are never going to recognize this man (Calderon). If he wants, let him govern in the north for the rich, but not in the south, ” said Apolinario Fernandez, 37, a teacher from Lopez Obrador’s home state of Tabasco in the southeast. “We are ready to do whatever is necessary,” said Belasario Cruz, 32, a farmer from Tabasco. “We are tired of the rich having everything and the poor having nothing.”They came from all corners of the country, young and old tired of masqueraded elections and determined to make sure that their votes are respected. They arrived from as far as north in Tijuana, the famous border town with the US, to San Cristobal de las Casas, the capital of the state of Chiapas, bastion of the Zapatista rebels. In the Mexican heartland, every town and city was swelled with demonstrators, chanting slogans against the electoral commission and against foreign head of states who have already landed their support behind the declared winner, Felipe Calderon, 43 years old, the candidate of the rich.Calderon, a lawyer and US educated held a press conference yesterday afternoon to say that “the vote was clean, [and that he] has already received congratulatory phone calls from top foreign governments,” including president George Bush, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero and Colombian President Alvaro Uribe.One has the impression that Mexico has all of a sudden become Haiti no. 2, having to watch the same situation that took place during the last elections in Haiti being repeated. Well, not entirely the same. In Haiti, the cry from the masses reversed the situation in their favor. In Mexico, it appears highly unlikely that Obrador will get his way when the High Court rules over claims of fraud in a lawsuit filed by Obrador’ s party in a last dish attempt to resolve peacefully what sets to become an explosive situation. Too much is at stake, and the most important ones are NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement in which Mexico is a member), the State Petroleum industry and the foreign-owned industrial establishment based in the north. Obrador has pledged during the campaign to renegotiate all these hot issues on behalf of the exploited masses.However, it is not surprising that the head of states mentioned above were the first ones to endorse the Calderon “victory.” Having been part of a conservative clan like Harper and Bush, Calderon, who is the son of PAN (Partido Action National) founder and the former head of its youth movement, is a conservative bon teint whose credentials offer greater insurances to his future homologues to the north than Manuel Obrador whom the western press has called “an enigmatic figure.” An if Spanish PM Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, a social democrat like Obrador, has joined Ottawa and Washington in congratulating Calderon is because, just like La France in Haiti, Spain wants to bury the hatchet with Washington over the its pulling out of Iraq.Most experts agree that the social democratic movement sweeping Latin America has not deviated from the bourgeois democracy championed by western capitalist countries. It is still committed to upholding the free market reform while trying to assert its political independence from Washington. Hugo Chavez, its leader, despite his fiery speeches against George Bush in all international forums and his rapprochement with Havana, has never mentioned even remotely possible to severe Venezuela’s petroleum agreements with US oil companies. In fact, Venezuela’s petroleum company, Citgo, owns one of the largest chains of gas stations in North America.But that is not enough to appease the Canadian and American elites that are not ready to pardon those who want to establish regional autonomy, even bourgeois, free of their fold. So Manuel Lopez Obrador seems to fall victim of the “GREAT” games. And conformist politician as he is, like René Préval in Haiti, he will most likely to fall into line after the High Court rules against him. The poor and downtrodden will be left to go it alone.Meanwhile in the mainstream press, the psychological warfare is already well underway. “Conservative Felipe Calderon’s victory in the Mexican presidential election could signal that the leftist tide sweeping Latin America has reached its high-water mark, as voters frightened by the radicalism of Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez seek refuge in more mainstream ideas across the region, “ notes Associated Press. And the note continues, “Intolerance, confrontation, messianic attitudes and stridency – once staples of Latin America’s left – are proving less attractive than leaders who can provide stability and strengthen historically weak institutions, like the separation of powers, independent central banks and judiciaries. “So Calderon, a button-down technocrat who swore to take Mexico into the grand industrialized family in the 21st century, has the political machine, including the mainstream press and the military establishment to preserve his “victory.” Only the deprived people can reverse the trend. The massive demonstration that took place this afternoon signals a major threshold on the road to achieving just that. In any event, a Calderon government is likely to enflame social polarization and deepens class antagonisms. See Also: https://csmsmagazine.org/news.php?pg=20060701I149 (Mexico misery belt propelling López Obrador to power)
An Election coup took place in Mexico in the lost of Manuel Lopez Obrador
