Well clearly Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador´s honeymoon with the foreign press is over. For more then two years AMLO was the darling of the international community. For the foreign press, Andres Manuel was a fascinating, almost mythical figure, a leftist David fighting the “evil” Goliath of the right. How could you go wrong exalting this new “revolutionary” figure in Mexico? Even Bill Clinton, said that the Mayor of Mexico City was one of the most interesting politicians he had met. Now, the European and US press are portraying a different AMLO. Example is this editorial published by the Washington Post:
Mexico's Moment of Truth
Will a fair vote stand?
Wednesday, August 16, 2006; A12
IN THE 6 1/2 weeks since he narrowly lost Mexico's presidential election, Andrés Manuel López Obrador has turned the nation's politics into a public spectacle. A fiery populist with a messianic streak, Mr. López Obrador has led thousands of his supporters to pitch tent cities in downtown Mexico City, occupying the Zocalo, its main square, and a two-mile stretch of the Paseo De La Reforma, one of its major boulevards. He has denounced the election as a fraud and the product of a vast conspiracy, without furnishing even remotely convincing proof. Now, after a partial recount has apparently failed to yield any significant shift in his favor, he threatens to paralyze Mexico with a campaign of civil disobedience "for years, if that is what circumstances warrant."
His goal, Mr. López Obrador nobly insists, is to "save" Mexico's fragile democracy. In fact, by daily demonstrating his disdain for the country's electoral institutions while showing no actual failure on their part, Mr. López Obrador threatens to subvert the democracy he claims to champion.
As Mr. López Obrador recklessly toys with the stability of a nation that emerged from one-party rule just this decade, it is worth examining the election he has been so busy maligning. Although he trailed Felipe Calderón, a center-right candidate, by 244,000 votes in the presidential tally -- barely 0.59 percent of the 41 million votes cast -- the vote yielded big gains for Mr. López Obrador's left-leaning Party of the Democratic Revolution; it picked up seats in the nation's Congress. When some members of Mr. López Obrador's own party disputed his allegations of fraud, he publicly accused them of having been bought. Although there was no evidence of widespread irregularities, let alone fraud, on Aug. 5, Mexico's independent Federal Electoral Tribunal, a seven-judge panel, ordered a recount at 11,839 polling stations, about 9 percent of the total.
That recount is complete. According to Mexican press reports, it has yielded no major change in the presidential results -- certainly nothing sufficient to justify Mr. López Obrador's wild allegations. The Federal Electoral Tribunal now has until Sept. 6 to either annul the election or certify the results and declare a winner.
Mexico, for years a party-led dictatorship, is at a turning point. Will its relatively new and untested democratic institutions be able to resolve a contested election, or will it descend into chaos and weak central authority as a result of a failed candidate's cult of personality? One hopeful sign is that lately Mr. López Obrador's crowds have dwindled in the streets of Mexico City. That may mean that even his partisans have begun to recognize that Mexico's continuing progress toward democracy is more important than one man's unbridled ambition.
3 comments:
Ana Maria, COMPLO! Reality is rearing its ugly head. It HAS to be a machinated complot. Wake up elitist know-nothings. Lopez won. I say so.
Congressmen and Senators from the
PRD who have been interviewed
by the Press have shown a lot of self control, unlike their candidate AMLO. When asked, "Why the Marches and the city tents?". They all without exception maintain that there was fraud, and they do it so convincingly, with arguments so well analized and structured that one has to realize
that they are sharp, hardworking, and loyal. Loyalty that keeps them from using common sense.
their Political Stature shows that they have excelled in politics
because of those positive characteristics. But, They should ask themselves if that Loyalty to their leader, (who has shown to be unethical, by not accepting the decision of the Electoral Tribunal
when he knew from the begining as a candidate that the results of the electioins were going to be based on Electoral Law and on Tribunal judges decisions), is worth risking all that they have gained, risking future accomplishments, but most of all
risking MEXICO, A Country that they have sworn to serve?
MEXICO needs them and their abilities for future Progress not for Future Confrontation.
O.M.V.
Your view that: quote "Well clearly Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador´s honeymoon with the foreign press is over. For more then two years AMLO was the darling of the international community" is completely bias! The international press, and more so the American press always refers to Lopez Obrador as the "leftist" candidate, hardly a good sign in fact is the opposite.
But as we can see from the rest of your opinion you have always been against his platform.
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