Mexican Presidential Will Not Concede

MEXICO CITY (By Héctor Tobar, LATimes) 2:13 PM PDT, July 4, 2006 — The result of Mexico's presidential vote was thrown into doubt today as federal election officials acknowledged that more than 3.4 million ballots, some 8% of the total, remain uncounted.

The announcement by officials of the Federal Electoral Institute, made in response to allegations of fraud by leftist candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, meant the race between Lopez Obrador and conservative Felipe Calderon was still too close to call.

An initial count of the ballots from Sunday's presidential vote gave a slim but apparently insurmountable lead to Calderon, who as of Monday evening was said to be leading Lopez Obrador by 402,708 votes with 98.45% of polling stations "processed."

But officials acknowledged today that the count did not include vote totals from thousands of polling stations where "irregularities" were noted in the official paperwork. Those polling stations were counted as "processed" but their votes were not tallied.

The Calderon campaign insisted that the final outcome of the election is not in doubt.

"The general tendencies and the result will not change," said Calderon advisor Arturo Sarukhan. "Felipe Calderon is today the president-elect of Mexico. With or without these 3 million votes the result will not change."

But leaders of Lopez Obrador's Democratic Revolution Party (PRD) said election officials had committed a serious error by creating the widespread impression that nearly all the votes had been counted.

"It seems to me very grave, and unforgivable, that a fact of this nature was not released to the public," said Jesus Ortega, Lopez Obrador's campaign manager.

Federal Electoral Institute President Luis Carlos Ugalde reminded Mexicans in a radio interview today that the preliminary count issued by the institute has no legal standing. The winner can only be determined after the official count of all the polling reports begins Wednesday, Ugalde said. The more than 3 million uncounted votes will then be added to the official tally.

Ugalde made his statement hours after Lopez Obrador claimed 3 million votes were "lost." The leftist candidate also said his campaign had noted many irregularities in the preliminary count of the votes.

PRD officials repeated and elaborated on those charges at a press conference today. They said they had noted that many polling stations in the states of Jalisco and Guanajuato, strongholds of Calderon's National Action Party (PAN), had been reported twice.

Officials of the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, whose candidate Roberto Madrazo was running a distant third with 21.5% of the votes, announced Sunday night that they would contest the election results in the courts.

Even before the announcement that additional ballots were yet uncounted, analysts said Lopez Obrador could petition the Federal Electoral Institute to overturn a Calderon victory. Such a challenge would be the first serious test of Mexico's modernized electoral system, which has transformed itself from one of the hemisphere's most disreputable to one of the most exemplary.

"Now it's the turn of the lawyers and the specialists," said Sergio Aguayo, a writer and commentator here. "The fact that there's just a 1-point differential opens the field to many different challenges."

Beyond ballot issues, Lopez Obrador also could charge that President Vicente Fox violated Mexico's strict election laws when he toured the country for months making speeches and giving out scholarships in what many considered a thinly veiled campaign to support Calderon, who is with his PAN. Mexican presidents are prohibited from campaigning for their successors.

Lopez Obrador also could challenge the results at individual polling places, though such a petition is unlikely to succeed.

Before Tuesday's announcement, independent observers here had praised the conduct of Sunday's vote. In a bid to overcome a long history of voter fraud, Mexico has adopted a series of strict federal laws and created independent electoral institutions and a respected system of electoral courts that have won international praise. Anti-fraud measures include a single voter registry and a uniform photo ID card for voters.

"It's very normal here for close elections to end up in the courts," said Lorenzo Cordova, a specialist in electoral law and former member of Mexico's Federal Election Institute. "In the last decade, political disputes here have increasingly moved from the streets to the judicial system."

Electoral laws are so strict, Cordova said, that an aggressive lawyer could argue that Fox violated the law on election day when he showed reporters and photographers that he had marked his ballot for Calderon.

Plans for a quick and accurate count went awry early Sunday night when the independent Federal Election Institute said the race was too close to call. After hours of respecting laws that prohibit candidates from declaring victory before an official tally, both Lopez Obrador and Calderon announced publicly that they had won.

On Monday morning, both men reiterated those declarations.

"We won, yes, by a narrow margin," Calderon said in a television interview. "It's time to recognize the result. It's not my triumph -- it's the triumph of the Mexican people."

Lopez Obrador said that if election officials certified a Calderon victory, he might accept defeat. But he said his campaign had noted "a tendency that is not normal" in the official count early Monday morning.

"Any candidate or party has the right to review the documentation" of the vote count, Lopez Obrador told Televisa. "All I'm asking is that we be allowed to verify the data."

Whoever becomes Mexico's next president will face a host of challenges. Results in congressional races showed no party would have a majority in either the Chamber of Deputies or Senate, though Calderon's PAN became the largest party in both houses for the first time. Mexico's stock market rallied Monday and the peso strengthened on news that the pro-business Calderon may have pulled off a narrow victory.

"It was a great sigh of relief for the markets," said analyst Guillermo Mascarenas Cortina Jr. of IXE Casa de Bolsa in Mexico City.

But others warned that the exuberance could be short-lived if a recount is protracted, or if Lopez Obrador mounts an aggressive challenge to the results.

"The quicker we get out of this, the greater the certainty for governability down the road," said Jorge Ramos, Latin America analyst for Goldman Sachs in New York.

Times staff writers Marla Dickerson in Monterrey and Carlos Martinez and Cecilia Sanchez in Mexico City contributed to this report.