Mexico Reevaluates Venezuela Relations

[gorbal]

MEXICO CITY -- Mexico said Sunday that it is reevaluating its diplomatic relations with Venezuela after Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez accused the Mexican government of stealing its country's recent presidential election.

Chavez said last week that his government had not recognized the victory of Mexican ruling party candidate Felipe Calderon because of concerns about alleged election irregularities.

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Chavez apparently expanded on his allegations Saturday when interviewed by CNN at the Nonaligned Movement summit in Havana. According to a CNN anchor, Chavez again accused Mexico's conservative National Action Party of stealing the election, and said Calderon's campaign had "destroyed" the opportunity for good relations with Venezuela.

Attack ads by the National Action Party compared leftist candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador to Chavez, calling the candidate "a danger for Mexico."

(snip)

More-


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/17/AR2006091700093.html

[MasonJar]

1. Well, Mexico can once again settle down to being a satellite of

the US cabal...and it can safely continue to ignore the poor and cater to the rich just like the Bushites do.

[Posteritatis]

2. That was quick. (n/t)

[LeighAnn]

3. Poor Venezuela :(

How on earth will Venezuela ever survive without the support of that economic powerhouse Mexico?

Go Hugo!!! Vivo Evo!!!

[Acadia Blue]

20. Mexico is a corrupt oligarchy where the poor are oppressed and

persecuted and an entire family must work just for food and shelter. Mexico is a marxian dream come true.

[UTUSN]

4. CHAVEZ is disrespecting the sovereignty of other nations

with his continual shooting his ignorant mouth off. If he COULD, he would be doing it on Shrub's scale.

[Pavulon]

5. Hide

the chavistas will be after you soon...

[UTUSN]

7. Haha!!1 Also the Fidelistas, the AMLOistas, but I'm Equal Opportunity

offender: The wingnut Cuban Exiles (1st generation) also would like to un-Geneva-Convention me.

[citizen snips]

6. Calderon stole the election.

it's about time other countries speak up and hold them accountable.

[malaise]

9. Bingo n/t

[gorbal]

16. I wish people had done that for us:(

I guess they found out what happend.

[Acadia Blue]

22. Ditto

[struggle4progress]

8. Perhaps Nicaragua should reevaluate relations with the US?

Chavez may have a loud mouth and a tin ear, but it's small stuff in comparison to George and his gang, including (of course) their abortive coup attempt against Chavez.


September 14, 2006 11:42 PM ET
US warns Nicaraguans not to back Ortega

The US ambassador to Nicaragua has issued a vigorous warning to this small Central American country's electors against supporting Daniel Ortega, the veteran leftwing Sandinista leader and the frontrunner in November's presidential election.

In a frank interview with the FT, Paul Trivelli said Mr Ortega was "undemocratic" and would roll back much of the advances made in recent years. And, underlining the concern felt in Washington about the regional influence of President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela, the ambassador said he had no doubt that Venezuela was playing an important role in the election ...

The ambassador said that an Ortega victory – while vague on many issues, the 60-year-old former rebel leader has talked of increasing the role of the state and renegotiating Cafta, the trade agreement between the US and Central America – would force Washington to "re-evaluate" relations.

"He has made it pretty clear what kind of model he would put in place. And I think that under those conditions . . . would definitely be re-examined – and not only by the executive or the State Department or the White House but by the US Congress." ..

http://news.moneycentral.msn.com/provider/providerarticle.asp?feed=FT&Date=20060914&ID=6024044

And in their last presidential elections, Jebbie ran ads warning Nicaraguans that his bro the Prez didn't want them to elect the wrong person: http://www.yachana.org/reports/nica2001/bush.html

Context: the United States spent the Reagan-Bush era paying thugs to murder and terrorize the Nicaraguan population.

This sort of threat from the W-istas seems very common.

How about Haiti? During the reign of George I, the US supported thugs who deposed Aristide, the first-ever elected President there. Dead squad control returned. Aristide eventually returned and was re-elected. The W-istas spent a number of years cutting off international funding and vilifying Aristide before kidnapping him in the dark of night and dropping him off in the Central African Republic. A gang of Floridians then moved in as rulers. Since the coup, something like 8000 Haitians have been murdered

Australia seems not to be immune: both Bush and then deputy secretary of state Armitage attacked candidate Latham during the 2004 election campaign.

There's some argument that the Mexican election was stolen, in a manner analogous to Florida 2000, and it may be stretching too much to regard that as a coincidence, since the W-istas clearly took sides in the Mexican election.

GRAND THEFT MEXICO
Greg Palast in London
Matt Pascarella in Mexico City
Monday, 3 July The Guardian
Dispatch from Mexico City
http://www.gregpalast.com/stealing-it-in-front-of-your-eyes

[IndianaGreen]

10. You are the one being ignorant--the election in Mexico was stolen!

The Panista government is now crying foul that someone outside of Mexico has dared to point out what is so obvious to everyone else, including those of us that know that our elections in 2000 and 2004 were stolen.

Lopez Obrador and his followers are doing what we should have done, reject the pretender and usurper and take to the streets.

As to disrespecting the sovereingty of other nations, we Americans sure got a lot of room to talk about that.

Shall I mention US meddling in the elections in Mexico, Venezuela, and the recent threats to Nicaragua by the US ambassador if they elected Danny Ortega President?

[Judi Lynn]

14. Don't forget the threats to Bolivians tossed their way by both Rumsfeld

and Condoleeza Rice promising them dire consequences should they elect Evo Morales.

[Acadia Blue]

23. Yes, it was stolen by the oligarchial pigs. Chaves is right to speak out.

[IndianaGreen]

11. Throng Calls Loser Mexico’s ‘Legitimate’ President

Whose side are you on, the Panistas that stole the election, or the people that are demanding a ballot by ballot recount? Bush has already sided with PAN's Calderon, the English speaking and American educated candidate of the elites.

Published on Sunday, September 17, 2006 by the New York Times
Throng Calls Loser Mexico’s ‘Legitimate’ President
by James C. McKinley Jr.

MEXICO CITY, Sept. 16 — More than 150,000 supporters of the losing leftist candidate for president flooded into the capital’s historic square on Saturday and declared him “the legitimate president” of Mexico.

<snip>

Having lost a court battle for a full recount, Mr. López Obrador resorted Saturday to a tactic with deep roots in Mexican history: he convened a “national convention” of his supporters to draw up a new agenda for the country.

By a show of hands, the crowd unanimously denied Mr. Calderón had won. They declared Mr. López Obrador president, asked him to form a cabinet and supported a constitutional convention. “It’s an honor to be with Obrador,” they chanted.

Some historians said the convention echoed the alternative plans for Mexico put forward by revolutionary heroes like Emilio Zapata and Francisco I. Madero 100 years ago.

“The slow, difficult, incremental construction of the Mexican nation and state has passed through dozens of plans, made in the heat of political conflict,” said one historian, Lorenzo Meyer. “The idea of conventions and plans is something very much part of Mexican history.”

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/0917-04.htm

[UTUSN]

12. Who (how many) are "the people" demanding whatever?

I'm off right now, so I can't RE-POST the link from Wikipedia showing that the ENTIRE voting percentage was 58%, that AMLO got 35% of THAT, which means something like TWENTY PER CENT is what this so-called revolution accounts for, with a steadily diminishing factor.

I am not siding with Shrub in "siding with CALDERON." This government (the U.S.) merely did what just about all of the other nations have done, which is to RECOGNIZE what a certain other country has DONE INTERNALLY.

The European Union observers validated before the Mexican commission that whatever fraud there was was not determinant of the outcome.

And, as usual in these threads, I attacked CHAVEZ (or CASTRO or the Cuban Exile community), but the responders attack ME, a fellow DUer. Let's say it again: I do not attack a DUer. I attack CHAVEZ, yet you attack ME. Later.

[gorbal]

13. Ummmm, you have to stop going by Wikipedia articles

I love it, but it is flawed. Check out some real articles

During the military celebration Saturday, small groups of his supporters pushed up against metal barricades separating the crowds from the parade holding signs reading "Fox, crook" and calling for a full recount of the election that Lopez Obrador lost by a margin of less than 0.6 percent.

Mexico's top electoral court on Sept. 5 declared Calderon the winner of the election by less than 234,000 votes out of 42 million cast. The ruling, which cannot be appealed, rejected claims by Lopez Obrador that the vote was skewed by systematic fraud and improper spending by the Fox administration.

(snip)

Link-
http://www.forbes.com/technology/feeds/ap/2006/09/16/ap3022302.html

[IndianaGreen]

17. I did not attack you, I attacked your characterization of the Mexican

elections and Chavez's remarks regarding them. You are indeed a long time honorable DUer and if I offended you, I sincerely apologize for that.

As to Mexico, I firmly believe that PAN, with some help from PRI, conspired to steal the elections much in the same way the GOP has stolen our elections.

Published on Thursday, September 7, 2006 by the Guardian / UK
Out for the Count
by James K. Galbraith

Felipe Calderón has been named president of Mexico, by a court, much as George Bush was named President of the United States, by a court.

But did he win the election? We do not know. The court's decision does not establish this, any more than the Bush v Gore case established that Bush won his first election - which, as we now know, he did not.

In both cases, the truth could have been known in time. But it was not. And that is because one side - in the legal struggle, the winning side - refused and resisted a full recount of the votes.

In both cases, we can be sure that if plaintiff and defendant had been reversed, the decisions would have been unanimous the other way. If Bush had been for it and Gore against, the US supreme court would have voted 9-0 for a full recount in Florida. If Lopez Obrador had led the count by a minute fraction, and if it were Calderón charging irregularities and fraud, then the Mexican electoral court would have recounted all the votes.

On July 16, I summarised in this space the principal irregularities found in the preliminary report of the vote (the PREP), in an analysis by the physicist Luis Mochán. They were: (1) an improbably stable absolute differential between Calderón and AMLO, throughout the count; (2) an improbably low AMLO total in the first 10,000 boxes, which were not included in the PREP, suggesting that he might have started the night with negative votes; (3) obvious backtracking and mistabulation in the late hours of the count, and (4) a non-normal distribution of the differentials across precincts between Calderón and AMLO, suggesting that in many close precincts small numbers of votes could have been shifted to Calderón.

<snip>

"(1) The PREP presented obvious errors; (2) These errors show that officials have the capacity to interfere with the computers that made the reports, adding, eliminating and modifying data; (3) The computer system, or at least that part in charge of reporting the results from the PREP, is not robust and it may be interfered with; (4) The absence of an explanation of these anomalies and the enormous propaganda pretending to induce the notion of a perfect process can not but produce distrust about the other stages in the election process."

In its decision, the Mexican election court compounded this problem with a type of reasoning quite familiar in the United States, where it cropped up over the Ohio vote in 2004. Yes, they agreed that seals were broken on the voting packets. Yes, they agreed that Lopez Obrador suffered illegal propagandistic attacks. Yes, they agreed that the private sector and Vicente Fox had participated illegally in the election. But because it could not be proved that these illegalities were sufficient to turn the election, they accepted the declared result.

http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0907-27.htm

[Acadia Blue]

21. the difference between him and shrubery is that he is not killing anyone

[anotherdrew]

29. yet . n/t

[Bacchus39]

15. Mexico need not kiss Chavez's ass either

what would you expect after Chavez's accusation? ask the President of Peru.

[IndianaGreen]

18. The Panista government no more represents Mexico than Bush

represents the US.

[Adelante]

26. Come on, IG

Fox currently has a 66% approval rating. The PRD has a disapproval rating of 80%.

You're entitled to express your opinion, but what is it based on?

In addition:

Polling Data

If the presidential election took place again, who would you vote for?

Felipe Calderón (PAN)


48%

Andrés Manuel López Obrador (PRD)


35%

Roberto Madrazo (PRI)


13%

Source: GEA-ISA
Methodology: Face-to-face interviews with 1,152 Mexican adults, conducted from Aug. 19 to Aug. 21, 2006. Margin of error is 3.5 per cent.

http://www.angus-reid.com/polls/index.cfm/fuseaction/viewItem/itemID/12978

If the presidential election took place again and the only candidates were Andrés Manuel López Obrador of the Democratic Revolution Party (PRD) and Felipe Calderón of the National Action Party (PAN), who would you vote for?

Felipe Calderón (PAN)


47.5%

Andrés Manuel López Obrador (PRD)


33.8%

Neither


12.9%

Not sure / No reply


5.8%

Source: Consulta Mitofsky
Methodology: Face-to-face interviews with 1,200 Mexican adults, conducted from Aug. 19 to Aug. 27, 2006. Margin of error is 3.1 per cent.

http://www.angus-reid.com/polls/index.cfm/fuseaction/viewItem/itemID/13195

Here's a national opinion poll in Spanish dated 9/11/06 where Calderon would win by 54% and 63% say he will be good for the country.

http://www.bgc.com.mx/

Apparently the Mexican people do feel represented by the PAN.

[Adelante]

27. Another one

Polling Data

If the presidential election took place again today, how would you vote?

Felipe Calderón (PAN)


54%

Andrés Manuel López Obrador (PRD)


30%

Roberto Madrazo (PRI)


12%

Patricia Mercado (PASC)


3%

Roberto Campa (PNA)


1%

If a new election took place with just the top two finishers contending, who would you vote for?

Felipe Calderón (PAN)


55%

Andrés Manuel López Obrador (PRD)


29%

Not sure / Neither


16%

Source: Reforma
Methodology: Face-to-face interviews with 1,515 Mexican adults, conducted from Aug. 18 to Aug. 20, 2006. Margin of error is 2.5 per cent.

http://www.angus-reid.com/polls/index.cfm/fuseaction/viewItem/itemID/12958

[Flanker]

28. Not really those polls are called giving the new guy a chance

Any candidate can win any election if you go by their post election approval (obviously they have to be declared) soon we will see his real numbers after the honeymoon.

[Adelante]

31. And Fox's approval numbers?

Always 60-70%. The issue is whether Mexicans respond to PAN leadership. It seems they do.

[Flanker]

33. Fox has always had single digit approval

That poll is either corrupted or perhaps they are giving him a last hurrah.

[Adelante]

35. Fox has never had single digit approval numbers

I've never seen that, anyway. He's usually around 60%. The lowest I remember was in the 40s.

[gorbal]

36. They are angry about the protestors, those numbers could change

Just like Bush's approval ratings seem to strangely spike skyward before elections.

Obrador took over the capital for to long to maintain the peoples good will, especially with coorperate controled media at the helm of public opinion. He can win it back by showing what his scary sounding "parallel government" will do.

If they truly help people like they say they will you will see those numbers change. If not, well you won't. I don't know what to think as my knowledge of Mexico is growing but still limited, but I have read about other "parallel governments" in Mexico states. It could go either way.

[Adelante]

39. Sure they could change

But I don't think that a comeback is all that likely. A lot of people who supported him when it looked like he had a shot at the presidency just won't anymore. I mean, they signed on for a presidential campaign, not a lifetime of service to AMLO's political aspirations. I do agree that the encampments were a turnoff to the public and a political mistake, (particularly as they stood empty for a month before they were finally taken down, jobs lost and businesses failed and traffic a nightmare for these empty tents), but it's just one part of a more complicated story.

I'm not an admirer of AMLO, I admit, although I made the effort. I'm glad he ran because Mexico needed to focus on its poverty and the PAN needed the shake. At the same time, I don't believe he is what Mexico needs right now in its history. He's too much of an ex-prista caudillo for my taste. I'm closer in my thinking to the Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas end of the PRD. As far as the candidates in the election went, however, my personal choice was Patricia Mercado, who never had a real shot.

[Flanker]

19. Garcia is kissing his ass

So is Uribe, really need to keep up.

[Bacchus39]

30. Chavez said if Garcia won he would break off relations with Peru

Peruvians elected him anyway. I guess Peruvians are kissing Bush's ass then??

[Flanker]

32. There is a difference between an empty threat and kissing ass

Garcia and Calderon are weak and weaker Chavez smells blood on the latter.

As for Garcia being elected he used the good old Bush strategy of terrorizing the population into voting for him.

[Bacchus39]

37. how did Garcia terrorize the population?

please elaborate.

[Acadia Blue]

24. Mexico is kissing Bush's ass daily.

[rinsd]

25. Is Chavez very short or have a small penis?

The continual need to picks fights for no reason than his own gradiosity is bizarre.

[Judi Lynn]

34. The American pResident who has tried to destroy him is short.

He compensates for his shortness by attacking and killing people all over the world, interfering in their governments, and holding his little arms out like an idiot when he walks, hoping he'll look larger.

[Mudoria]

38. OMG... that's supercool