MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Mexico's electoral court ruling confirms Calderón

Mexico's Federal Electoral Tribunal, Trife, rejected Monday claims that July 2 presidential election was riddled with fraud, virtually confirming Conservative Felipe Calderón from the ruling party as the country's next president.

The court decided not to order a full recount of votes from the disputed election, as demanded by populist candidate and former mayor of Mexico City Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador who narrowly lost the election, according to the official ballot count.

After reviewing 375 challenges filed by the candidates and private citizens, the seven judges on the Trife panel unanimously stated that the alleged irregularities did not represent enough votes to overturn the official results.

Calderon edged Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador by just under 244.000 votes, which is 0.58% out of 41 million votes cast.

During the course of the more-than-three-hour Monday morning session, Judges Eloy Fuentes Cerca and Alejandro Luna said the analysis carried out so far allowed Trife to conclude that the final count will not change "substantially".

Almost two-thirds of the challenges were lodged by the coalition backing Lopez Obrador, who accuses the conservative administration of President Vicente Fox of engineering fraud on behalf of Calderon.

On making the announcement Chief magistrate Leonel Castillo praised his colleagues on the Trife, the federal judiciary's governing body on electoral matters, and Mexico's news media, stressing the panel had relied on established criteria in assessing charges about alleged irregularities in the election.

"Castillo said Mexicans can rest assured that votes were correctly counted" said Castillo who nevertheless offered no specifics on how many challenges the court found justified or the number of votes that will be annulled or changed.

Mr Lopez Obrador has led mass protests of "civil resistance" demanding a recount of all 41m ballots cast in July's election and his campaign had filed complaints at around 50,000 polling stations, but the court ordered a recount at just 11,839 of them - about 9% of the national total.

But since the judges' decision is final and there are no appeals, in legal and constitutional terms means Lopez Obrador's fight to become president has come to an end. Trife has until September 6 to make the definitive announcement of who will succeed President Fox next December.

Lopez Obrador has been pursuing a campaign of civil resistance for more than four weeks, mainly in the capital, where tens of thousands of his supporters have occupied the central square - the Zocalo - and two of the main downtown avenues, disrupting traffic and hurting trade at shops, hotels and restaurants.

Leftists have threatened to intensify their demonstrations in Mexico City on the occasion of President Fox's sixth and final state of the union speech to Congress, set for next Friday, and during the country's Independence Day celebration on September 15/16.