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News Release Archive | Mexico | Accuracy.Org

Dirty Tricks Cloud Mexico’s Elections

July 5, 2012

While some media outlets are claiming that Institutional Revolutionary Party candidate Enrique Peña Nieto has been confirmed the winner of the Mexican election, experts on the ground note that this betrays a lack of appreciation for the rules in Mexican elections. For example, a Reuters headline reads “Final Mexican Results Confirming Pena Nieto Win” and the New York Times ran an op-ed identifying him as “president-elect of Mexico.”

LAURA CARLSEN, carlsenster at gmail.com
Carlsen is director of the Mexico-based Americas program of the Center for International Policy. She said today: “Although President Obama and others called to congratulate Enrique Peña Nieto on his victory in Mexico’s presidential elections, election authorities have not officially declared a winner and are recounting votes in the midst of massive evidence of fraud and violations of electoral law. That’s the way the law works, even proof of violations is unlikely to revert Peña Nieto’s current lead of six points. However, the new president, if validated, will take power under the cloud of accusations that his party, the PRI [Institutional Revolutionary Party], is up to the same dirty tricks it employed to retain power for 71 years. …

“Although the PRI candidate Enrique Peña Nieto seems to have won with a relatively wide margin over his closest contender, center-left candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, the process was stained by old-style PRI tactics of vote-buying, coercion, manipulation of the media and other dirty tricks that have been documented by civil society organizations and independent media. Mexico once again faces a crisis in its political system, as a large part of the population believes the elections were not fair or legal and rejects a return to a political system that blocked democracy for decades. Newly mobilized youth in the ‘I am 132′ movement, human rights organizations and the left are awaiting official results and analyzing the elections before announcing their response. Mainstream media celebration of the Mexican elections that ignores the deep popular discontent with the return of the PRI and the multiple anomalies documented before and during the elections has proved to be premature.”

IRMA ERÉNDIRA SANDOVAL, irma.erendira at gmail.com
Irma Eréndira Sandoval is professor of political science and coordinator of the Anti-Corruption Laboratory at the National Autonomous University.

JOHN MILL ACKERMAN, johnmill.ackerman at gmail.com
Professor at the Institute for Legal Research at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, Ackerman said today: “I’m not surprised that some media are reporting that Enrique Peña Nieto has been confirmed the winner of the election, but that’s just not correct. The Electoral Tribunal still needs to consider all the complaints and they haven’t even received them yet.

He just wrote the piece “Obama Plays Risky Game in Mexico With Embrace of Enrique Peña Nieto,” which states: “The Mexican people are more stunned than excited by Enrique Peña Nieto’s apparent victory in Sunday’s presidential election. No one has taken to the streets to celebrate the return of the old Party of the Institutional Revolution (PRI). To the contrary, thousands of youth congregated at the Revolution Monument in downtown Mexico City to protest against the “imposition” of Peña Nieto through media manipulation, vote-buying, and ballot-tampering. Meanwhile, waves of people who sold their vote to the PRI on Sunday in exchange for gift cards flooded local supermarkets on Monday to cash in on their payments… It is likely that Peña Nieto’s advantage in the preliminary count, 38 percent to leftist Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s 32 percent, will hold up once the official count is issued at the end of the week and the electoral tribunal later resolves any lawsuits. But the formal, legal recognition of Peña Nieto as Mexico’s new president will not necessarily translate into the public legitimacy he would need to govern the country effectively… It is time for U.S. diplomacy toward Mexico to branch out to include the political opposition, Congress, civil society, and the common person. Military aid also should be replaced, perhaps entirely, with support for infrastructure and the economy. Instead of helping Mexico’s old guard reestablish the ways of the past, the U.S. should help the Mexican people protect the gains of the present.”

Tagged With: Irma Erendira Sandoval, Latin America, Laura Carlsen, Mexican Elections, Mexico,

Mexican Election: Did Media “Fabricate Popularity” of Apparent Winner?

July 2, 2012

JOHN MILL ACKERMAN, johnmill.ackerman at gmail.com
Professor at the Institute for Legal Research at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, Ackerman said today: “Mexico apparently has decided to turn back the clock. Widespread frustration with twelve years of uneven political progress and stunted economic growth under the right-wing PAN [Party of National Action], has led to the desperate move of calling back to power the old guard PRI [Party of the Institutional Revolution]. Meanwhile, in a repeat of the last presidential race in 2006, the left-wing PRD [Party of the Democratic Revolution] has once again been left in a close second place.

“[PRI candidate] Peña Nieto also owes his apparent victory to the television duopoly which has literally fabricated his popularity out of thin air. The recent exposé by The Guardian of enormous secret contracts between him and the television companies for the purpose of promoting his image, are only the tip of the iceberg. Upon arriving in office, the new president´s first priority most likely will be to pay back this invaluable support through new laws and regulatory measures. Such a deal would also inevitably involve protection for the Peña Nieto administration from uncomfortable media oversight and accountability.” See Ackerman’s interview Monday morning on Democracy Now.

IRMA ERÉNDIRA SANDOVAL, irma.erendira at gmail.com
Irma Eréndira Sandoval is professor of political science and coordinator of the Anti-Corruption Laboratory at the National Autonomous University.

She said today: “Although the initial results seem to indicate that the old Party of the Institutional Revolution may have won the election, turnout was very high and the leftist candidate, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, received more votes (over 15 million) this time around than he did during the 2006 presidential election. In general, the majority of the anti-Felipe Calderon vote was directed towards López Obrador, and not towards the PRI. In addition, there is plenty of evidence that a great deal of the support for the PRI came from vote-buying and unfair support by the principal television stations. There does not appear to be a clear ‘mandate’ in favor of the PRI and, in order to govern, it will have to significantly modify its authoritarian tendencies and open itself up to criticisms from society, most importantly from the emerging student movement.”

Also see: “Mexican Media Scandal: Secretive Televisa Unit Promoted PRI Candidate“

Tagged With: Irma Erendira Sandoval, John Mill Ackerman, Latin America, Mexican Elections, Mexico,

Protests at G20 Summit

June 18, 2012

LACY MacAULEY, lacymacauley at gmail.com, @lacymacauley
MacAuley is an Occupy D.C. activist currently at the People’s Summit in La Paz, Mexico. She said today: “La Paz is the closest that activists can get to the G20 Summit. The town of Cabo San Lucas is under heavy security. No one can travel to or from Cabo unless they are a documented Cabo resident. They have even closed the schools and hospitals. I’ve heard a story from a woman whose pregnant family member in Cabo was told that the hospital would not even be open if she were to give birth during the summit. They were lucky: The baby was born last week. This is just another example of how the G20 acts with total disregard for everyday people — they make decisions behind closed doors that impact all of us, decisions that serve the corporate elite of the world, and leave the rest of us out. We need to build our own solutions to the crises of the world, and move beyond big institutions like the G20.”

JUAN JOSE GOMEZ BERISTAIN, sme.jjgoberis at gmail.com
Beristain is a member of the Mexican Electricians Union (Sindicato Mexicano de Electristas) who is at the People’s Summit in La Paz, Mexico, near Cabo.

He said today: “As a Mexican worker, fired two and a half years ago because of the neoliberal government of Mexico, I’m against the G20 because the G20, a strictly economic organization, have no moral or political responsibility for the people and are the real rulers of the political and economic policies in our countries. We haven’t elected any of them. … Yet they have more power over us than the governments of our countries. And now we’re tired of them. We won’t take another year paying the debt they invented for us, suffering the crisis they built. Now is our time to fight back with unity, unity in action, organized action, informed action.”

HECTOR DE LA CUEVA, correohdc at yahoo.com.mx
De la Cueva is a member of the Mexican Action Network Against Free Trade (RMALC) who is also at the People’s Summit in La Paz. He said today: “We are here because the G20 represents the governments of the main powers of the world. … We are here to make sure that the people’s voices are expressed for the rest of the world. … The People’s Summit represents the people’s interest. It represents the working people. So there’s two sides to the story. We are here to make sure that our story, the 99 percent story, is heard.”

Tagged With: corporations, economy, G20, Hector de la Cueva, Juan Jose Gomez Beristain, Lacy MacAuley, Mexico,

Immigration: “U.S. Drug Demand Destabilizes Mexico”

May 11, 2011

JOHN GIBLER, john.gibler at gmail.com
Author of the forthcoming book To Die in Mexico: Dispatches from Inside the Drug War as well as Mexico Unconquered: Chronicles of Power and Revolt, Gibler said today: “Immigration from Mexico to the U.S. is largely the result of failed policies by the U.S. and Mexican governments. These include trade policies that have resulted in a lack of economic opportunities in Mexico and drug policies that have led to a recent explosion of violence in Mexico. Rather than focusing exclusively on the symptoms with immigration reform, as Obama appears to be doing, he should start by dealing with drug policy reform, so that drug demand in the U.S. stops destabilizing Mexico.”

Gibler just wrote the piece “A War of Anonymous Death,” which states: “After four years of President Felipe Calderón’s so-called war on Mexico’s drug trafficking organizations, murder and impunity have become the order of the day. Since December 2006, more than 38,000 people have been killed, with no noticeable reduction in drug shipments across the border. Federal authorities have opened investigations into less than five percent of those homicides. Most of the people killed are assumed to be guilty of their own murders by the implied logic that surely they were up to no good if they ended up in a ditch, wrapped in a blanket, and shot through the head.”

Background: BBC reports: “More than 20,000 people have gathered in the centre of Mexico City to protest about the large number of deaths caused by drug-related violence and the government’s response to it.”

For more information, contact at the Institute for Public Accuracy:
Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020; or David Zupan, (541) 484-9167

Filed Under: , Tagged With: Mexico,