Mexican Elections Open Period
Of Great Global Struggle
by Gretchen Small
Mexico's Presidential elections on July 2 have yet to produce a clear victor, despite the official July 6 announcement that the candidate of the ruling National Action Party (PAN), Felipe Calderón, won by a mere 243,034 votes of the total of 29.76 million votes cast, over his leading contender, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, of the Democratic Revolutionary Party (PRD). López Obrador announced that same day that his "Coalition for the Good of All" will challenge the election results in the courts, and will take his case, that the election has been stolen, to the Mexican people.
Reports of irregularities at 50,000 of the 130,000 polling stations; the dubious reporting of a consistent Calderón lead by election officials in the preliminary count; and the fact that election officials, only when caught, admitted that more than 2.5 million votes had been set aside for "inconsistencies," even as they claimed 98% of the vote had been counted, were among the things which raised the stench of a rigged election, especially given the tight vote.
Unlike the capitulation of the Democratic Party in the wake of the questionable U.S. elections in 2004, López Obrador made it clear that he does not fear mobilizing the people. On July 6, the candidate convoked Mexicans to attend a July 8 rally in Mexico City's main plaza, the Zócalo, to inform them of the evidence of fraud, which the campaign will file on July 10 before the electoral court. A new phase of battle had been opened.
These Mexican election developments are a sign of the times into which the world has entered as a whole. Nothing is settled, and nothing will be settled, American statesman Lyndon LaRouche noted on the morning of July 4, before the current phase of the conflict had even opened. And that is because the international financial system is collapsing. The Ancien Regime is proclaiming its security at the time it's about to fall. This thing is coming down, whether today or next week, or within the month: It's coming down, LaRouche said. Nothing is going to be settled, because the system is coming down.
Financier interests have been threatening López Obrador that whatever happened, he must not bring the Mexican people into the fight, or he will be held personally responsible for provoking financial crisis and chaos in Mexico. That threat is meaningless, LaRouche noted. Whatever happens, it's a stand-off. If they declare Calderón the victor and override the opposition, that will lead to chaos.
Nothing is going to be settled now, LaRouche reiterated. This opens a period which has the characteristics of a revolutionary period, globally. Because the entire world system is coming apart. And under those conditions, no one has a secure position. Reality will assert iself. This is like somebody saying: 'We're going to win this war in Iraq quickly.' Remember? The famous victory in Iraq, Bush declaring victory on the ship? 'I declare victory!' Well, then why are we still fighting a war three years later?
LaRouche was emphatic: This election is the opening of a great struggle, which is not going to quit real soon. We are entering into a period of great struggle. Nothing is settled, and nothing is really likely to be settled. This is a period of open struggle, which is going to be continuing for the present period. And people have to understand that. As in Mexico, so everywhere else.
The fact that López Obrador, from the night of the election, refused to capitulate to a government-run media effort to present Calderón as the undisputed winner, before any official count had been carried out, shows that he has some sense of the greater strategic picture, LaRouche added.
New Winds Sweeping Ibero-America
For the past six years, Mexico has been ruled by the PAN, the leading party of Synarchy in Mexico since its founding by direct Nazi Party intelligence operatives in the last Great Depression. Former Coca Cola salesman Vicente Fox, however, proved unable to put through the structural reforms which the global financier interests demand. The PAN did not have a majority in either the Senate or the Chamber of Deputies, and members of the Revolutionary Institutional Party (PRI) and the PRD allied to block the privatization of the state oil and electricity companies, refused the government's proposal to loot the country's most poor through a Value Added Tax upon basic foods and medicines, and so forth.
With former President Carlos "NAFTA" Salinas and his minions in the PRI party apparatus imposing Roberto Madrazo as the Presidential candidate of the PRI party, on a platform of "Synarchy Light," diverse interests from various parties coalesced around López Obrador as the potential leader of a resurgence of Mexico's once-famed nationalism. That nationalism had been reduced since 1982 to mere rear-guard actions in defense of national sovereignty, but was never entirely crushed.
Thus, although there were five contenders in the race, the election came down to a race between the two contending currents which have shaped Mexican politics since the founding of the nation: those upholding the principle of national sovereignty to defend the General Welfare, versus those allied with oligarchism, and the relevant imperial power of the day.
Despite the ups and downs of Mexico's history, until the financiers succeeded in crushing the country at the end of 1982—a defeat secured when Argentina and Brazil, in particular, refused to join Mexico in declaring a debt moratorium to force through global negotiations on a return to a production-oriented world monetary system—Mexico played a key role in defending the principle of national sovereignty and the General Welfare within the Western Hemisphere. The last thing the financier interests wish to see now, is the revival of that deep-rooted Mexican tradition, precisely at the time that "the winds of change are blowing across Latin America," as Argentine President Néstor Kirchner put it in his July 5 address to Venezuela's National Assembly.
Recognizing to some degree the collapse of the global financial system, and seeing the fight within the U.S. Democratic Party for a return to Franklin Delano Roosevelt's policies which the LaRouche forces have unleashed, the Western Hemisphere allies of the United States are rebelling against the Synarchists' anti-State policies of unregulated looting by private interests. Integration for production and development is back on the agenda in South America, and Mexico is needed to advance those changes to the whole Western Hemisphere. No amount of outraged cries against alleged dangerous "populism" will long be able to hide the fact that nearest U.S. neighbors would jump to ally with a United States which came to its senses, and led a fight to replace a financial system which is crushing every nation worldwide.
The Stampede That Failed
It is feared that this spreading rebellion could reach the U.S. border in this election, which lies behind the hysterical cries that López Obrador is an intolerant, messianic authoritarian and "a danger to Mexico," because he won't accept the orchestrated results.
The Synarchists behind the Calderón campaign had hoped a concerted campaign by the government, the PAN, and the Federal Electoral Institute (IFE), to ensure reporting that Calderóon was the undisputed winner, could stampede López Obrador into conceding the election quickly. According to some reports, the PAN had hopes that they would get a quick recognition of the Calderón victory by the Bush Administration, to convince their opponent he had no chance. All the reports broadcast around the world in the first two days after the election, that Calderón had won the election, were based entirely on "preliminary" counts—but no one reported that part.
Times being what they are, reality not being as the Ancien Regime would have it, López Obrador did not capitulate, not early, nor after the official count was finished two full days later. López Obrador and his team are holding firm that a vote-by-vote recount of the entire election is required. The mood in the country is hot, too. Should that full recount be refused, those who opposed it shall have sole responsibility for what happens in the country, PRD officials say.
PAN leaders hysterically denounce any vote-by-vote recount as a violation of the law, which they insist only permits specific polling station votes to be recounted, under specific conditions. The mere talk of a full recount is proof that López Obrador doesn't respect the law, PAN leaders rave.
Some international financial circles are getting worried that if Calderón and the Ancien Regime attempt to simply strongarm acceptance of their victory, their delusions of pulling together a "coalition government" with sufficient legitimacy to ram through fascist "reforms" could go down the tubes, and the situation in Mexico could slip out of their control altogether. Then, how could Mexico change its Constitution, adopt a parliamentary system, permit foreign takeover of oil and electricity, eliminate the remains of the national pension system, bust the trade unions, and make Mexico's poor, by God, pay those taxes on their food and medicine?
This fear is what explains the chorus of voices, from London's Financial Times, to the New York Times, Wall Street political whore Jorge Castañeda, and the National Endowment for Democracy's top operative in Mexico, Sergio Aguayo, pressing the Mexican government and Calder@aaon to accept a vote-by-vote recount, with the argument that his election must have legitimacy, as well as legality. The hysteria with which the PAN refuses any such recount, raises suspicions that it fears that a recount might just overturn its victory.
