MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Mexican police uses force on “civil resistance” protestors

Mexican riot police used on Monday clubs and tear gas to disperse supporters of populist presidential candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador who claims he was cheated of victory in July 2 presidential elections. This is the first time the authorities have used force on the protesters.

Police was called in when protestors including several members of Mr. Lopez Obrador's party, Party for the Democratic Revolution, PRD, tried to block access to the San Lazaro Palace, seat of the Congressional Lower House.

Lower House speaker Alvaro Elias Loredo who belongs to the ruling PAN of President Vicente Fox and of Felipe Calderon, the apparent Conservative candidate winner of the election, admitted having called the police to protect the premises but underlined he "did not approve of the officers using force against protestors".

Mexico City press reported that some 500 police officers, aided by tow-trucks, took part in the operation to clear the blocked entrance. Scores of hundreds of Lopez Obrador followers who have been blocking roads in the capital for two weeks protested Monday outside San Lazaro Palace and two of the country's main banking institutions, Banamex and the Citigroup.

While protestors at the bank dispersed after six hours, those blocking San Lazaro palace, vowed to remain until September 1 when President Fox is due to make his final state of the union address. Lopez Obrador later told his supporters that the events showed the authorities are "taking off their masks and putting aside their talk of supposed legality and respect".

According to the official count Calderon defeated Lopez Obrador by 240,000 votes, a 0.58% difference. However the PRD candidate and former Mexico City mayor alleged fraud and has since led a mass civil disobedience campaign to demand a full recount of (41 million) votes. A court-imposed recount of votes from 9% of polling centers has been completed but the result has not yet been announced.

Calderon held a press conference Monday to maintain that a just-completed partial recount of the ballots from July 2 "confirmed" his victory.

"We are satisfied with the results of the recount and believe that this corroborates the news that the Federal Electoral Tribunal (Trife) is proceeding to carry out its constitutional duty to announce the president-elect," he said.

He described as "a lie" the populist coalition's claim that the partial recount discovered "thousands of lost votes" and "many irregularities" which, could "lead to the annulment of results from many of the more than 11,000 polling places included in the recount".

Calderon said he was "optimistic" that the supreme electoral tribunal, TRIFE, would soon confirm his victory and called on Lopez Obrador to abandon the campaign of protests.

Though the re-tallying of ballots from 9% of precincts nationwide concluded Monday, the results will not be officially released until after review by the Trife's seven judges.

But Horacio Duarte, an attorney working for the PRD, said that Calderon lost a total of 14,140 votes in the process. Duarte said more than 7,900 of the polling places reviewed had either more or fewer ballots than they should have had, meaning that TRIFE could decide to simply annul the results from those precincts, in which case - he said - "there will a change as to who was the winner".

Public opinion in Mexico City has a dual attitude towards protestors who for weeks have been blocking the financial hub of the capital. A poll published Monday in the daily El Universal shows that Mexico City residents disapprove of the road-blocking protests by 65% to 30%. Yet the survey also found that 59% agree with Lopez Obrador "electoral fraud" claims last July 2, while 63% would like a "vote-by-vote" recount.