Mexico City may face poll protest

Mexico’s left-wing presidential candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said yesterday that he is refusing to accept the results of the country’s election, raising the question of whether he will launch street protests like those which brought central Mexico City to a halt in the 2006 vote.

A federal electoral tribunal rejected his allegations of vote-buying and other campaign violations in favour of Enrique Pena Nieto, the candidate of the former ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party.

Yesterday Mr Lopez Obrador said he considered the ruling illegitmate and called for a protest on 9 September.

“I am telling the people of Mexico that I cannot accept the judgment of the electoral tribunal that declared the presidential election valid,” Mr Lopez Obrador said. “The elections were not clean, free and genuine. As a result, I will not recognise an illegitimate power that’s emerged as a result of vote-buying and other grave violations of the constitution and the law.”

He was able to call hundreds of thousands into the streets for rallies, and he retains a large base of support in Mexico City.

However, Mr Pena Nieto’s margin of more than three million votes was far wider than the few hundred thousand votes that cost Mr Lopez Obrador the last presidential vote.

Mexico City may face poll protest

Mexico City may face poll protest