Election protests in Mexico escalate

Mexico's Federal Electoral Institute had until Aug. 13 to recount only a portion (about nine percent) of the ballots from the July 2 presidential election. No one knows exactly what the outcome of the recount might be. All Mexicans will learn who officially won the presidency when the electoral tribunal issues a ruling on the outcome of the recount; it must do so by Sept. 6. Lopez Obrador, disputed runner-up of the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD), wants votes from nearly 5,000 polling places thrown out, a top aide said on Aug. 12, amid signs that a partial recount won't change enough results to swing the election his way. However, Obrador says the partial recount shows that more than 100,000 votes were inaccurately counted in the initial tally. He says the electoral court has no choice but to annul the results at thousands of polling stations and declare him the winner. Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of Obrador supporters from around the country remain camped-out in tent cities in Mexico City's vast, downtown plaza and along Reforma Avenue, one of the capital's main thoroughfares. Over the last week demonstrators have carried out a series of direct actions: * Aug. 14, riot police used tear gas to break up gatherings of Obrador supporters who blocked access to the Chamber of Deputies of Mexico's national congress, hurting several legislators from the politician's own PRD. * Protesters have briefly taken over highway toll booths, allowing motorists to pass through without paying, a tactic they repeated on Aug. 12 on highways in the central state of Puebla, the southern state of Guerrero and the northern state of Nuevo Leon. Activists swung open toll barriers for a couple of hours on several main highways serving Mexico's three largest cities: Mexico City, Guadalajara and Monterrey. Also hit were highways to the Pacific coast resort of Acapulco and Nuevo Laredo on the US-Mexico border. * Protesters blocked access to Mexico's main tax office on Aug. 11, hitting the government in the pocket for backing Felipe Calderon, the disputed winner of the election of the conservative National Action Party. Several thousand protesters waving banners in support of Obrador surrounded the building, run by the Finance Ministry, and prevented employees from entering for several hours. Obrador's PRD said the ministry was in league with business groups that financed Calderon's campaign. "The Finance Ministry is one of the key points in the financing of the electoral fraud," said Marti Batres, head of the party in the capital. * Protesters blocked access to foreign banks in Mexico on Aug. 9, surrounding the main offices in Mexico City of US-based Citigroup's Mexican unit Banamex, the Bancomer bank owned by Spain's BBVA and British giant HSBC. They closed them for several hours. All but one of Mexico's major banks are in the hands of foreign companies, and the industry's sell-off has been a symbol of the free-market reforms in Mexico disliked by the left. Obrador, who proclaims that his protests are not guided by ambition but rather are aimed at "saving democracy and the Mexican Constitution," has made it clear that he will advise his followers to prolong their civil-disobedience actions "for years, if the circumstances require it." Obrador's supporters wanted a complete recount of the July election's ballots, not just a partial recount. In Mexico, news analysts are calling attention to what they see as a deeply polarized population that the next president will have to work hard to reunite.