MEXICO CITY: Fox is blocked from giving address

[G2099]

In a historic rebuke, opposition lawmakers seized control of Mexico's congressional chamber yesterday and blocked President Vicente Fox from delivering his final State of the Nation address.

Fox, who was adorned in Mexico's green-red-and-white presidential sash, stood awkwardly in the chamber's foyer for nearly 10 minutes before conceding that he had no chance of entering. Surrounded by bodyguards, Fox was handed a microphone, quickly said that he would leave, and gave a copy of his speech to a legislative official.

The lawmakers who commandeered Mexico's congressional building are aligned with the Democratic Revolutionary Party, or PRD, and its candidate, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, who is demanding a full recount of the July 2 presidential election results.

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2006/09/02/fox_is_blocked_from_giving_address/

[AX10]

1. ......

:nopity:

[Joanne98]

2. "On September 12th there will be two Presidents of Mexico", signed AMLO

[Fridays Child]

3. I wish our Dems had that kind of chutzpah. eom

[AspenRose]

4. Wow....

(!)

[Selatius]

5. Obrador is a thug who refuses to accept the honest election results.

He should concede the election in the name of national reconciliation. The accusations of election fraud are false, and he knows it. Calderon won fairly.

:sarcasm:

[Cascadian]

7. I hope that was sarcasm (n/t)

[orwell]

6. Perhaps Scalia...

...should travel down there to coronate Calderon.

That should fix everything...

[dweller]

8. a bit more ...

"The lawmakers chanted ``vote by vote, polling place by place," repeating a phrase that Lopez Obrador and his supporters have plastered on posters for the past two months. Some waved signs that said ``Fox is a traitor," and others lofted Mexican flags.

Fox's departure from the legislative building, which is in the poor San Lazaro neighborhood of Mexico City, capped a strange sequence of events that captivated this city. First, thousands of police officers in riot gear surrounded the legislative building, anticipating an assault by thousands of Lopez Obrador supporters.

The masses of protesters never materialized. Dozens of street vendors who had anticipated a big crowd stood idle on the streets leading to the building. Police officers practiced using their shields to block violent demonstrators, squatting and rising repeatedly. With nothing better to do, many drifted toward the vendors, marching back to position sucking on popsicles.

While the police waited for an onslaught that never came, Lopez Obrador convened his latest in a series of dozens of ``informative assemblies" in the large downtown square, the Zocalo, where thousands of his followers have been camping for the past month."

democracy in action,
dp