Mexican Elections.. hopefully the final chapter

Corinthian™

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Alright. So here in Mexico we are full of drama. Presidential elections were close, losing candidate cried fraud and lots of marches

here's a small review of something that happened recently

Protests stop Mexico's state of the nation speech

By Colin McMahon
Tribune foreign correspondent
Published September 1, 2006, 10:12 PM CDT

MEXICO CITY -- Facing the threat of an ugly confrontation with opposition congressmen, President Vicente Fox abandoned his reading of his state of the nation speech Friday before the Mexican congress, breaking a tradition dating back 180 years.

"Given that the posture of a group of legislators makes it impossible to read the message I have prepared for this occasion, I am leaving the hall," Fox announced after delivering a written version of the annual presidential report, called the Informe.

Half an hour earlier, legislators from the Democratic Revolution Party had swarmed the congressional stage. They waved anti-Fox posters and the tri-colored national flag, chanting "Mexico! Mexico!" And a leading senator from the party stood at the podium, refusing to yield.

"Deliver it and go," the congressman shouted.

The gambit worked. But it also showed Mexicans, again, how fractured their political system has become.

The Democratic Revolution Party and its leftist allies accuse Fox of illegally torpedoing their candidate, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, in the July 2 presidential election. They refuse to accept official results showing Felipe Calderon of Fox's National Action Party winning the vote.

And they consider Fox, as their signs of protest said Friday, a "traitor to democracy."

"Vicente Fox has turned the country into a powder keg," said Ricardo Cantu Garza of the Workers Party in one of several anti-Fox speeches that preceded the fireworks of Fox's arrival. "He never fulfilled a democratic reform of the Mexican state, nor strengthened its institutions. ... On the contrary, they are now submerged in the worst crisis of their history."

Though street protesters loyal to Lopez Obrador had sought to block Fox from reaching Congress, the president arrived safely at the legislative palace in a line of armored SUVs.

Late by almost 20 minutes but waving for the television cameras, Fox entered the building as legislators from his National Action Party chanted "Vicente! Vicente!"

Once inside the vestibule, however, the president stood down. Rather than challenge the opposition legislators on the stage, Fox bowed to the wishes of many congressmen even in his own party that he not further inflame the country's political conflict.

He handed over the Informe and announced his departure.

"The PRD showed its arbitrary and anti-democratic face," said Sen. Santiago Creel of the National Action Party, referring to the Democratic Revolution Party by its Spanish acronym. "It would have been easy to respond. ... But the PRD was turning this hall into a circus. We are not going to join in a circus."

In turning in a written version of the Informe, Fox fulfilled his obligation under the constitution, which demands that at the opening of each annual congressional session the president present a written summation of the state of the nation.

But in failing to read that Informe to legislators, Fox became the first Mexican president in 80 years to depart from a tradition that began in 1825.

The question of whether Fox would, could, should or had to make the speech was debated all week, and not just in political circles.

Legal scholars weighed in on exactly what the constitution demanded. Average Mexicans, many of whom normally show little interest in the Informe, were debating tactics and options as if the congressional session were a sporting event.

Mexicans hardly needed more evidence of the severity of their political crisis. Street closings and other protests around Mexico City have lengthened commutes, disrupted businesses and idled workers.

Public confidence in legislators and political parties has sunk to an all-time low, according to a survey this week in the Mexico City daily Reforma.

Amid all this, the thousands of die-hard protesters who are intensely loyal to Lopez Obrador say they are not going away.

They refuse to accept the official results of the July 2 vote. And if the nation's highest electoral court ratifies Calderon's victory next week, as expected, Lopez Obrador supporters vow not to recognize the new president and instead construct a parallel government.

The events Friday showed how far apart are the competing views of Mexico and its incipient democracy. Lopez Obrador's supporters say that they are fighting for democracy and that their blocking of Fox's speech was a legitimate part of the fight.

Yet in that same speech, which Fox recorded and aired over national television later Friday, the president used the word "democracy" dozens of times.

"Democracy is synonymous with liberty, and, today, Mexico lives in a true system of liberties," Fox said in the last Informe of his six-year term. "Today, democracy is the verb and the noun of national life."

While that message was being aired, the halls of Congress that Fox had just abandoned were finally emptying out. And the leaders of the various parties were talking to the cameras, making their case for democracy.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/...60901mexico,1,3742702.story?coll=chi-news-hed

it seems that what the congressman did was not what was intended to be.

In a (very respectable) news radio show, some informant said that the original plans was to take over the congressional stage while President Fox was saying his State of the Nation speech, kidnapping him and forcing the military to rescue him, probably killing some leftist congressmen in the act. After that, Lopez Obrador would practically call for a revolution.

Now, this proves some things. First, that Lopez Obrador's simply a ****ing psycho who wants to take over Mexican power using Castro-like strategies. Second, that Lopez Obrador's intentions were shady in the first place.

Thank Goodness for the Congressmen stepping in and taking over the stage earlier and possibly sparring us a ****ing Civil War
 
Yeah its a crazy situation that ive been following. Dude, you lost, get over it. Didnt they do more than one recount already?
 
Darthphere said:
Yeah its a crazy situation that ive been following. Dude, you lost, get over it. Didnt they do more than one recount already?
he was conspirating against the president and probably endangering his life
 
Yeah, but from what ive seen on the news, the guy has a huge following. Its a pretty bad situation, similar things are going on in Nicaragua right now. Latin America needs to start wising up and stopping these mad men from gaining any power, legitimate or not.
 
Darthphere said:
Yeah, but from what ive seen on the news, the guy has a huge following. Its a pretty bad situation, similar things are going on in Nicaragua right now. Latin America needs to start wising up and stopping these mad men from gaining any power, legitimate or not.
followers who are either normal leftist uneducated people, extremists and people who get paid FOR going... and the normal leftist cover at least a 15% of his followeres and those are getting less and less

this is pure bull**** man
 
Corinthian™ said:
followers who are either normal leftist uneducated people, extremists and people who get paid FOR going... and the normal leftist cover at least a 15% of his followeres and those are getting less and less

this is pure bull**** man


I agree, and if that kidnapping story is true, its getting out of hand.
 
Darthphere said:
Yeah, but from what ive seen on the news, the guy has a huge following. Its a pretty bad situation, similar things are going on in Nicaragua right now. Latin America needs to start wising up and stopping these mad men from gaining any power, legitimate or not.

not really, if you read up it's just in Mexico city, that's hardly a huge following.
In fact, for all his tough talk Obrador doesn't dare to try an organize a protest anywhere else because it would turn ugly I can asure you of that.
he is slowly becoming the single focus of all hatred toward politicians.
god, those people don't even know the different between protest and extortion anymore. :rolleyes: they think they'll get a free ride with this joker and a man who doesn't have a passport and allies himself with the people responsible for single greates loss of the peso against the dollar in the history of Mexico is not the kind of guy we need in Los Alamos.
 
And I thought that the sore losers of both the 2000 and 2004 election in the United States were bad
 
Darthphere said:
I agree, and if that kidnapping story is true, its getting out of hand.
I believe it's really true... this people are comparing this to the massacre of 68 and the fraud of 88 which are way bigger things than this little act

they are abusing the people here
 
Mr Sparkle said:
not really, if you read up it's just in Mexico city, that's hardly a huge following.
In fact, for all his tough talk Obrador doesn't dare to try an organize a protest anywhere else because it would turn ugly I can asure you of that.
he is slowly becoming the single focus of all hatred toward politicians.
god, those people don't even know the different between protest and extortion anymore. :rolleyes: they think they'll get a free ride with this joker and a man who doesn't have a passport and allies himself with the people responsible for single greates loss of the peso against the dollar in the history of Mexico is not the kind of guy we need in Los Alamos.


Ill never understand that mentality myself, but ive never been poor and in the dumps, which seems from what ive seen and Corinthian has posted here these people who follow him are. I guess you offer someone in desperation paradise, theyll do anything to get it.
 
Darthphere said:
Ill never understand that mentality myself, but ive never been poor and in the dumps, which seems from what ive seen and Corinthian has posted here these people who follow him are. I guess you offer someone in desperation paradise, theyll do anything to get it.

my dad was poor, but he freaking worked for what he had, and I haven't had a free ride myself, I always have to work twice as hard and know twice as much as the next guy just to make a living. that being said, I think that governement services should improve, but the things this idiot is suggesting would NEVER happen, not without sorely neglecting infrastructure and other priority spending items. and nothing is going to happen while the cartels and the kidnappings are still rampant, he's not even a dreamer, he's a demagogue manipulator feeding of people's ignorance and lazyness.
 
Mr Sparkle said:
he's not even a dreamer, he's a demagogue manipulator feeding of people's ignorance and lazyness.


Pretty much the impression I get from him.
 
Darthphere said:
Yeah, but from what ive seen on the news, the guy has a huge following. Its a pretty bad situation, similar things are going on in Nicaragua right now. Latin America needs to start wising up and stopping these mad men from gaining any power, legitimate or not.

If they could wise up and stop those people then who would take there place. No one there is set to have that responsiblity.
 
ok, now finally this can begin.......Obrador, you lost, see you later.
 
why do they keep calling him the "conservative" candidate :confused: the "republicans" in Mexico are "PRI".

meh, whatever.
 
***** Galore said:
Why do we even have presidents?

Would you prefer a dictatorship? Or are you suggesting anarchy? While it has it's faults, democracy is still the best system.
 
Mr Sparkle said:
why do they keep calling him the "conservative" candidate :confused: the "republicans" in Mexico are "PRI".

meh, whatever.
the "Republicans" are divided between the PRI and PAN. PAN has the Catholics and the "neocons", PRI has the bureaucratic garbage. PRD has the "liberal rads" of the PRI, which are the same group of bureaucratic garbage but with some crazy Socialist with borderline Stalinist mentality


This is Corinthian being too lazy to log on
 
LOL! PLAS damning himself makes this thread really work. :up:

jag
 
Darthphere said:
Yeah its a crazy situation that ive been following. Dude, you lost, get over it. Didnt they do more than one recount already?

They never did a total recount of the votes.
 
Corinthian™ said:
I believe it's really true... this people are comparing this to the massacre of 68 and the fraud of 88 which are way bigger things than this little act

they are abusing the people here

Mexico is a country which have democracy since a few years ago, so is not easy to have a perfect sistem in such a little time. This sort of things are normal.
 
Gonking said:
They never did a total recount of the votes.
it was never legally asked for one, they would rally that in the streets, but to the Magistrate, they just brought several thousand casillas

kinda tells you something there, huh?

important information, turns out that all state gorvernors from the PRD party are giving their support to the new president elect
 

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