Sunday, July 09, 2006

Mexican Leftists Determined To Revolt

Losing Mexican Presidential candidate is, in essence, threatening to lead his supporters in a violent revolt.

While the announced winner of last Sunday's presidential election, Felipe Calderon, kept a low profile on Saturday, his leftist rival led a rally of at least 150,000 people, charged the polling had been marred by fraud and suggested there would be civil unrest without a vote-by-vote recount.

"If there is not democracy, there will be instability," said the rival, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, at a news conference just hours before he addressed his angry and defiant supporters in Mexico City's central plaza.

How kind of him to offer up that "prediction" of instability, though it hardly proves he's psychic. As the main instigator, it is no more a prediction than when a bank robber predicts a bank robbery.

Having defined "democracy" as "our party winning", I don't see how the Mexican leftists will settle for a mere recount. The fastidious Mexican election procedures probably produced the correct result the first time, one that a recount will verify.

UPDATE: Publius Pundit discusses AMLO's Mexico City rally. In an update, they refer to a Benjamin Ginsburg essay in the Washington Post (originally found by Real Clear Politics). Ginsburg exhibits the heartless logic of the hyper-politicized, suggesting Obrador's supporters press any and every legal advantage to overturn the election, regardless of the merits behind their argument. He seems impervious to the fact that Calderon won by hundreds of thousands of votes, and that the 2000 recount in Florida, despite the best efforts of Gore's lawyers, could only shift the final tally by about a thousand votes.

A.M. Mora y Leon also offers perfect analysis: "By AMLO's logic, if he 'represents the people' how could it be possible that the people could reject him? It’s impossible! It all must be a plot."

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