MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Lopez Obrador insists with “vote by vote” recount

Some 100.000 supporters of Mexican presidential candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador who is challenging Sunday July 2 electoral result, convened in Mexico City's main square and promised to keep up the fight against alleged “fraud” to “the very end”.

Lopez Obrador addressed the rally Saturday saying he would "peacefully" defend in court what he claimed was his unrecognized election victory over Conservative candidate Felipe Calderon from the ruling National Action Party. He also promised to visit the Attorney General's Office to question the results of the elections that he lost by only 0.58% of the vote, according to the Federal Electoral Institute, IFE.

"We'll follow you until the end" chanted university students next to the platform in the heart of the huge Zocalo square where the former mayor of Mexico City Lopez Obrador or AMLO - as he is sometimes known - addressed the crowd.

Mexico City Public Safety Secretariat estimated that a quarter million people attended the rally, but the media said the figure was closer to 100.000. Men, women and children dressed in yellow - the distinctive colour of the Democratic Revolution Party, PRD, listened for fifty minutes their leader's speech in spite of the rainy conditions.

PRD activists collected signatures from participants in the rally, demanding that the Judiciary branch conduct a "vote by vote" recount of results to "ensure clean elections and give certainty to Mexican institutions".

The Electoral Tribunal from the Judiciary branch has until September 6 to declare a winner in the election. Mr Lopez Obrador's 900-page claim alleges some polling areas had more votes than registered voters and that his opponent overspent on his campaign.

In an interview conducted before the election, Judge Leonel Castillo, who presides over the Federal Electoral Tribunal, said a full recount was both impractical and illegal. "It is not legally valid to unpack the votes and do a recount," the judge told the Milenio Semanal newspaper. However, he said partial results by polling booths could be questioned and if necessary recounted.

"We're going to prove that the upright principles of certainty and legality enshrined in the Constitution have been violated" stressed AMLO while followers with PRD caps and flags chanted "NO to fraud", "You're not alone". The PRD leader added that the demonstrations he is calling for all over the country do not seek to "affect the rights of others or break the law" but rather "strongly denounce this unacceptable situation of electoral fraud".

Lopez Obrador also accused Mexico's President Vicente Fox of being a "traitor to democracy" supposedly for having orchestrated "multiple irregularities" which he said kept him from winning the election.

Meantime a further controversy erupted between IFE and researchers from Mexico's Autonomous National University, UNAM, who claim that the preliminary results program was a "cybernetic fraud".

The preliminary results program was a system by which an advance of total ballots in certain districts helped show a clear tendency as to who could be considered the winner.

However in spite of the tight outcome, from the start Calderon from the ruling party was ahead, for most of the time. IFE argues this is because the first ballots were from the north of the country and urban areas, solid PAN, but UNAM claims that the software was manipulated since votes from PAN and PRD candidates at all times and during the whole preliminary process added to 71%, which is "mathematically impossible".

IFE insists the preliminary system was "precise, reliable, inviolable and followed international standards" plus the fact it was tested by UNAM experts.