Elections that only appear democratic happen throughout the developing world wherever the US has a strategic interest, which these days means everywhere. But they also happen in at least some developed countries, most notably the last two US presidential elections. We know it thanks to the superb investigative work of UK based journalist Greg Palast who analyzed those elections and documented how each was stolen in his important new book Armed Madhouse. Palast went on to state his belief that based on information he's uncovered the plans are now in place to steal the 2008 US presidential election, and he explains how it'll be done. It's in his new book, reviewed in detail and can be read at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

With this sort of "democracy" in America, what could we expect south of the border where longtime Mexico observer and writer John Ross says the fine art of election theft was perfected. It certainly was in evidence on July 2 as that election just completed with final results announced on July 6 looked just like the one held there in 1988 when Cuauhtemoc Cardinas (son of the country's last leftist president from 1932 - 38) ran against the US choice Carlos Salinas of the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) that dominated Mexican politics as a virtual dictatorship for over 70 years until it lost the 2000 presidential election to current President Vincente Fox of the National Action Party (PAN). Both these parties represent wealth and power so it's of little consequence to the US which of them runs the Mexican political system.

In 1988, Salinas was declared the winner with 51% of the vote in an election Cardenas clearly won. To achieve victory, the PRI never counted the votes from thousands of voting stations, stole and burned the contents of selected ballot boxes, falsified voter tally sheets and falsely claimed computers tabulating votes had crashed and couldn't be restored for 10 days following the election by which time Salinas was declared the winner. Following the announcement, few people believed it, and hundreds of Cardenas' supporters were killed in political violence opposing it in street protests over the next few years.

At this time, there's no way to know what will happen next following the just-announced final vote count. After the Federal Electoral Institute (IFE) reported the final count on July 6 showing ruling PAN candidate Felipe Calderon with a small but insurmountable lead, opposition candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador of the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) rejected the official count as "flawed." He called on his supporters to take to the streets in a mass show of strength on July 8 in both Mexico City's historic central square as well as around the country to protest the announced result and demand a ballot-by-ballot recount. At present, with 99.91% of votes counted, Calderon was said to have 35.87% of the votes to Obrador's 35.32%. But with the ruling authority in charge of the vote count, a miss, as they say, is as good as a mile, and that one-half percent difference is more than enough to likely assure another election theft.

Why? In claiming he won the Sunday election, Lopez Obrador cited many clear irregularities including manipulating preliminary vote totals, initially never counting 3 millions votes and then in hindsight only counting 2.5 million of them, ignoring 900,000 supposed void, blank and annulled ballots declared null, discarded and never included in the official totals, also never counting over 700,000 additional votes from missing precincts, denying the right to vote to many voters in strong Obrador precincts, and much more. As a result, Obrador announced "We have decided to challenge the election process and to ask the Electoral Court of the judicial branch of the federation for a recount of the votes because we cannot accept the results" officially announced by the IFE. Obrador said he will ask that the ballot boxes be opened and all votes be recounted. Campaign advisor Federico Arreola added "Building a democracy has cost a lot in this country and we are not going to give it up easily. There is no reason for Lopez Obrador to back out or defend a system that he doesn't belong to." He might have also added there's no reason to accept an election result contrary to the voice of the Mexican people that no doubt will show they spoke for Mr. Obrador as their president and not Felipe Calderon if an honest tabulation of votes is made.

The procedure going forward now is that the Federal Electoral Institute will submit the final vote count to the Electoral Tribunal for approval on Sunday, July 9. Lopez Obrador then has four days to present his case for a recount. The Tribunal, known as Trife, then has until September 6 to issue a ruling. The new president takes office on December 1 so it's possible the electoral challenge could change the result as now known. Trife has in the past reversed some local elections, but it's very unlikely it will reverse this one given the overwhelming pressure on it which in Mexico may include real and intimidating physical threats officials take seriously based on past history. Also, according to Mexico expert George Grayson of the US College of William & Mary, Virginia, the rules for the Tribunal's decision are vague - "It's going to be somewhat like the US election in 2000, where you have the Supreme Court justices voting without clear guidelines." If Grayson is right, look for lots of commotion and probable violence ahead but in the end the people of Mexico will again be denied their democratic right to elect the president of their choice - just the way it now is in the US. So much for democracy. In Mexico it's democracy, Mexican style which is the same way it works for their dominant northern neighbor - none at all.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

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Business as Usual: Mexican Election Stolen by Neolibs

Kurt Nimmo
Another Day in the Empire

Is it possible the poor of Mexico would actually vote for Felipe Calderón, billed as a “champion of free trade,” that is to say a neolib globalist? Even before the election, it was obvious the vote would be rigged, as Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who lost, now contends. “Obrador called Calderón ‘an employee’ of Mexico’s powerful upper classes and said a victory by his conservative opponent would be ‘morally impossible,’” reports the Washington Post.

As Narco News points out, Mexico has fallen victim to “state-of-the-art electoral fraud,” same as America did in 2000 and again in 2004. Obrador demands a recount, but faces an uphill battle, to say the least. “The true and legal victor in last Sunday’s elections, former Mexico City Governor López Obrador, will make his case today, Saturday, to his supporters and to the nation of how exactly this election fraud was carried out against him and them. He will have to do so against the gale-force winds of a boycott of the true facts by much of the mass media (especially the Mexican television duopoly of Televisa and TV Azteca), and the complicity of the country’s electoral authorities in the maintenance of their own false decrees.”

Many observers have compared the post-electoral conflict in Mexico 2006 to that of 2000 in the United States. While there are indeed parallels (as well as distinctions) to be drawn, there is a very important difference in the equation, and it is societal: That part of the electorate in the United States that was robbed did not see any way to fight and overturn the fraud, or simply was too gullible or afraid to do so. In Mexico, however, the path exists, a critical mass of the Mexican populace understands exactly what was done to them and is ready to assume the ultimate risks to overturn the crime. At stake for global capital and its increasingly simulated “election” processes not just in Mexico but throughout the planet is the manufactured belief that nothing can be done. As occurred a century ago, with the Mexican revolution of 1910, Mexico is on the verge of, as Zapatista Subcomandante Marcos has often said, “amazing the world again.”

In other words, the poor of Mexico may well go into the streets, something that is virtually unthinkable here in America. Of course, there is no reason to go into the streets here, as the election was stolen from a Skull and Bones elitist, John Kerry, by a fellow Skull and Bones elitist, Dubya Bush, and even if the election was not thrown there would be little difference, as the same WTO-NAFTA globalism would be on track under the “liberal” Kerry. López Obrador, pegged as a “leftist” by the corporate media, is opposed to globalism and its predatory precepts demanding grinding poverty.

Meanwhile, the “liberal” Los Angeles Times has published an op-ed by Gregory Rodriguez accusing Obrador of not only sour grapes, but also “harboring an authoritarian streak” (while the neolib class in Mexico, of course, is egalitarian). “Long before last Sunday’s election, [critics] feared that the charismatic, populist ex-mayor of Mexico City would refuse to accept a close defeat. And, to Mexico’s misfortune, they were right…. [Obrador’s challenge of the corrupt electoral system in Mexico encourages] the type of cynicism about politics that helped semi-authoritarian regimes maintain power in Mexico for most of the 20th century.”

Naturally, it should come as no surprise the LA Times would publish such an absurd bit of apologia, rife with blame the victim snobbishness. But then the “liberals” over at the Times are fully onboard with the New World Order, what I call the Neolib World Order.

“Realistically, unless the smoke clears quickly, Calderon will face the usual splits between rich and poor, pro-business and anti-poverty forces. Asi es Mexico. Indeed, this is democracy. It is messy, fragile, confusing, slow. Just look at Iraq,” opines the Pasadena Star News.

Say what? Look at Iraq? No, this op-ed writer is not clueless, he (or she) is deliberately disingenuous, firmly on the Neolib World Order bandwagon. Mexico has never experienced democracy, that is to say popular mob rule. According to my dictionary, democracy derives from the Greek demos, “people,” and kratos, “rule,” and as even a casual glance at current events reveals, the people, half impoverished, do not rule in Mexico. In fact, Mexico, along with the United States and Canada, was NAFTAized over a decade ago, that is to say transnational corporations rule through the tiny wealthy elites in these countries, and the people are left to compete in a “race to the bottom.” In Mexico, the bottom is right there, no race required.

Another op-ed, this one at the New York Daily News, tells us the people of Mexico like their grinding poverty and prefer to be victimized by “free trade” robber-bandits. “Assuming that Calderon has indeed defeated firebrand populist Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, just enough Mexicans have signaled that they prefer (however warily) Calderon’s commitment to 21st century free enterprise that holds the promise of lifting the country’s fortunes over Lopez Obrador’s old-style economic paternalism. The voters also made clear that they have no patience for the radical socialism trumpeted by Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez, and, in so doing, they sent a loud and welcome message across the region.”

In Bushzarro world, up is down, black is white, and the Mexican people prefer “attenuating poverty, extending equality of opportunity and generating a minimum of well-being for the population as a whole,” as Sara Gordon, writing for the Instituto de Investigaciones Sociales, puts it. In 2000, 10% of the Mexican population was living on less than a dollar a day and 26% on less than two dollars. “In 2002, half of Mexicans lived in poverty with one fifth in extreme poverty,” notes Ana P. Ambrosi. One half of all Mexicans prefer malnutrition, inequality, and the unchecked marauding of neolib sharks to “the radical socialism trumpeted by Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez.”

If you believe this, I have a chartreuse pony you may be interested in buying.

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Read from Looking Glass News

Mexico 2006: Florida all over again?

Now its Mexico's turn to face neo-con inspired mass voter fraud

STEALING IT IN FRONT OF YOUR EYES

Workers’ struggles intensify on eve of Mexican elections

Fox, the worst of them all