MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Mexico: Calderon president-elect but opposition disavows

Following weeks of challenges and fraud claims Mexico's Federal Electoral Tribunal proclaimed Tuesday Conservative Felipe Calderon as president-elect in the country's closest-ever election contest.

Calderon a former Harvard educated Energy minister from the ruling National Action Party, PAN, defeated populist former Mexico City Mayor Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador by 233,831 votes, equivalent to 0.56% in the July 2 presidential election.

Lopez Obrador, who alleges the election was manipulated and tainted by fraud, had demanded a "vote-by-vote" recount of all 41 million ballots cast, but TRIFE only agreed to a sample re-tallying of an estimated 9% of polling places nationwide.

The 43-year-old Calderon will take the presidential oath and sash next December first, succeeding PAN's Vicente Fox for a six-year term.

At the end of a four hours morning session, TRIFE ruled the July election valid and rejected Lopez Obrador's Democratic Revolution Party's (PRD) petition to annul the balloting in the face of "innumerable irregularities".

However TRIFE acknowledged that President Fox's participation in the campaign on behalf of PAN colleague Calderon represented "a risk for the validity of the elections" in the words of magistrates Alfonsina Navarro and Mauro Miguel Reyes, who drafted the ruling.

Navarro said that Fox's veiled attacks on Lopez Obrador constituted the greatest single irregularity in the electoral process. By both law and tradition, a sitting Mexican president is not supposed to engage in partisan politicking.

Finally TRIFE' presiding Judge Leonel Castillo said Tuesday's session celebrated "the culmination of a democratic electoral process" that confirms the "legality and legitimacy" of Felipe Calderon's designation as president-elect.

"The exercise of democracy is not possible if one doesn't submit to rules. Our country is no exception" added Judge Castillo. TRIFE's ruling is definitive and non appealable.

Speaking for TRIFE, Castillo said magistrates are prepared to let history "judge them" and predicted that the post-electoral "storm" will be followed by calm. "It's always been that way" Castillo underlined. "May we close this electoral process leaving confrontations behind".

The seven magistrates were forced to spend Monday night at TRIFE's headquarters to avoid protests staged by Lopez Obrador supporters, who have been camped on the Zocalo, Mexico City's sprawling central plaza, for weeks, while others are blocking city thoroughfares.

By the time TRIFE made its verdict public, some 1,500 supporters of Lopez Obrador had gathered outside the building to denounce the judges. They sang Mexico's national anthem, chanted slogans denouncing the electoral "fraud" and promised to continue with their "civil resistance" campaign which has extended to Congress.

Last Friday, there were chaotic scenes in the Congress when dozens of opposition deputies took over the podium and prevented President Fox from making his state-of-the-nation speech.

Since the election, Mr Lopez Obrador's supporters have been almost permanently camped out in the capital's main square. Thousands of Mexicans turned out on Sunday at a rally in Mexico City in which Mr Lopez Obrador declared he would go ahead and set up what he called a "national democratic convention" on 16 September - Mexico's Independence Day.

He has already hinted at establishing a parallel government. For his part, Mr Calderon has already spoken of the need to bring Mexicans together and on Tuesday, his campaign manager Josefina Vazquez Mota said the president-elect was ready for dialogue. But Lopez Obrador supporters have rejected any ideas of dialogue.

"The only possibility for a dialogue with the right's candidate would be for (Mr Calderon) to refuse the gift of the presidency which he did not earn at the ballot box," said Gerardo Fernandez Noroña, spokesman for Mr Lopez Obrador's Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD).