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Massive protests have been continuing in Mexico
against the faked election of the rightist candidate for president, Felipe
Calderon of the PAN (National Action Party). Organizers estimated the
demonstration in Mexico City at the end of July at 2 million persons,
many of whom are still camping out in the city.
Electoral fraud has been a
conspicuous feature of Mexican bourgeois politics since the decline in
the support of the long-ruling PRI (Institutional Revolutionary Party)
became manifest. In 1988, the PRI obviously stole the election from
Cuauhtemoc Cardenas, who ran in the name of the party’s populist
traditions, opposing its turn to neoliberalism. In the recent
presidential election, the PRI candidate ran a distant third, revealing
how discredited the traditional ruling party has become.
Vicente Fox, the candidate of the
PAN, a rightist Catholic party, won the last presidential elections in a
revolt against the state-party system. But Fox in office has proved to be
exactly the same as the PRI presidents that preceded him. In the July 2
presidential elections, the alternative to the PAN-PRI seen by the masses
was Lopez Obrador of the PRD (Party of the Democratic Revolution),
although the PRD is also a bourgeois party and not fundamentally
different from the PAN and PRI.
The PAN and PRI waged a venomous
red-baiting campaign against Lopez Obrador, which undoubtedly increased
his popularity among the great majority of poor people in the country.
Thus, the stealing of the election from the man seen as the people’s
candidate crystallized the massive discontent that has been building up
for decades in the country.
The following is the leaflet
distributed to the protest demonstrators by Socialist Action’s
co-thinkers in Mexico, the Liga de Unidad Socialista.
Everyone against the electoral
fraud! Recount the votes one by one, ballot box by ballot box!
Nation-wide strike in defense of the popular will! For
a Constituent Assembly that will restore national unity and sovereignty!
MEXICO CITY—The fraud perpetrated July 2
was only the culmination of a long, extremely costly, and bungled
manipulation of the electoral process by a broad cabal of powerful groups
of businessmen (mainly in our country and in the U.S., although they also
got support from European capitalists. They all had an interest in
deepening the neoliberal plundering of Mexico’s banks and energy
resources).
The fraud did not consist only of
doctoring the results and inflating some figures. Brutal operations were
perpetrated, such as the attempt, which fortunately failed, to knock the
head of the Federal District government, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, out
of the race.
This fiasco was followed by a campaign
for the PAN waged illegally by the office of president. As former
secretary of foreign relations Jorge Castañeda told the daily El
Universal: “Fox rigged the game for Calderon.” After such a confession by
Fox’s pals, there is hardly any need to offer further evidence.
Poisoning of the atmosphere with an
absurd labeling of Obrador as a “populist” and a “danger to Mexico” was
followed by massive telephone calls and rumor campaigns to instill fear
in vulnerable sections of the population, claiming that Obrador was going
to take away their houses and institute a tax terrorism if he got into
the presidency, and then stick to power “like Chavez in Venezuela.”
(Obviously the big media have been
careful not to give accurate information about Venezuela because if they
did it would be evident that both in terms of economic growth and human
rights Mexico is far worse off than the much maligned but little known
country presided over by Hugo Chavez.)
Like gilded youth who think that their
families’ wealth and power exempts them from the need to respect the
persons and integrity of citizens with low or modest incomes, the ruling
class in Mexico wants to mock the voters and the will of the great
majority of the population.
Money, the enormous concentration of
wealth and power, and the control of the media and the privileges
of the big businessmen and their stooges in government are the real
essence of the electoral fraud. The field on which the game was played
was not “even,” but extremely tilted to the right.
The pretense was designed to guarantee
the domination of the ruling class, especially the groups that have been
enriching themselves at the expense of the working people through their
policies of “globalization” and neoliberalism.
However, the ruling rich were not
satisfied with control of the executive branch, the legislature, the
media, the buying of votes, and economic pressure against the vulnerable
and impoverished masses. To keep the votes of the poor from counting,
they used the old, well-known electoral tricks, such as buying
representatives, stuffing ballot boxes, altering ballots, and
intimidating voters.
Respect the votes of the working
people!
We socialists say to the population that we do not
think that any candidate in this electoral process represents us. For the
July 2 vote, we called for writing in appeals for the freedom of the
Atenco prisoners as well as all political prisoners in the country.
But in the face of this electoral fraud,
in the face of this mockery that the regime is making of the votes of
millions of workers in the countryside and the cities who voted for
Obrador, we stand alongside the working people in their fight to win
respect for their will.
This new explosion of popular anger at
the fraud is simply an expression of irritation and discontent with the
neoliberal policies of the PAN and PRI governments. The working people
have suffered more than two decades of unemployment, low wages, worsening
working conditions (the Pasta de Conchos disaster is only one example), a
growing subordination of Mexico to imperialism, increasing cuts in social
security, energy supplies, and cuts in workers’ pensions.
Look at the contrast between the
super-exploitation of the workers and the extreme generosity that the
system has shown to the “poor little” banks!
We are experiencing a crisis of a fragile
and soiled “democracy” dominated by money. Whatever the outcome, the
situation will become constantly more difficult and complex.
With Calderon as president, the ruling
class will have a weak and massively discredited representative in the
central political post, a figure subject to all the whims of the
imperialists and the looters of the country. But with Lopez Obrador as
president, the system is not going to be significantly better able to
meet the needs of the majority.
And if an interim president
is installed as an alternative to a confrontation between the two leading
candidates, that will only be a stopgap. It will not solve the poisoning
of political life engendered by the degenerate Mexican ruling class and
its U.S. allies.
A lasting solution depends on the mass
mobilization continuing resolutely and beginning to generate a political
alternative that will lead to independence and a genuine democracy that
will safeguard the rights of the underprivileged population.
The immediate tasks are to fight the
fraud and stop the privatizations, the selling off of the country, and
the super-exploitation of the workers that it is essence of the PRI and
the PAN’s policy of capitulation to imperialism. To confront them, we
need to organize powerful demonstrations of resistance, such as forming
committees against the election fraud in the neighborhoods and throughout
the country—leading up to a nationwide strike.
The only solution for taking the poison
out of political life, for removing the disunity, and for the loss of
sovereignty is calling a constituent assembly. This will lay the basis
for a new kind of government, which will organize the actions needed to achieve
a free, democratic, sovereign, and independent Mexico.
For a nationwide strike to reverse the
electoral fraud!
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