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whatsup 8.03 hackJuly 05, 2006
A tale of two victories: a lesson learned from U.S. elections
You might not have been aware of it, but Mexico is in the midst of one of the most dramatic election seasons in its history. The United States’ southern neighbor had been ruled by one political party, the PRI, for about 70 years. In the year 2000 Vicente Fox, an opposition party candidate finally won, breaking the PRI’s hegemonic rule. Now it is an election year again and the race has been extremely close.
The three most popular political parties in the race are the PRI, Fox’s party the PAN, and the leftist PRD. For months beforehand nobody could say who was going to win because polls consistently showed a tie between the PAN and the PRD.
The election took place on Sunday, with the polls closing at 6 PM and an official announcement of the winner expected at 11 PM. But it didn’t turn out that way. A representative from the Federal Elections Institute came on TV to say that the race was so close that with the preliminary results they had it was impossible to predict a winner.
In the year 2000, a notable contrast was apparent to Mexicans. The election of Vicente Fox was considered a victory for democracy, while the elections in the U.S. seemed to be anything but. And it looks like now, in a very close and controversial race, Mexico is taking a cue from the United States. Unlike the U.S. in the year 2000, neither Mexican journalists nor the Federal Elections Institute called the election prematurely and had to make an embarrassing retraction. And neither of the candidates made the mistake in the year of conceding defeat prematurely. In fact, they did just the opposite: both candidates declared victory on election night.
So who is the real winner? Votes are still being counted. At first PAN candidate Felipe Calderón had a 1% lead, but during the day today PRD candidate Andrés Manuel López Obrador gained an advantage. At 9:49 tonight he was ahead by 1.6 %. Any website with the results will also have a disclaimer, “The results could change at any moment and therefore do not indicate a trend.” Vote counting will continue throughout the night until the numbers from every polling place in the country have been computed. And even then there will probably be controversy and accusations of fraud. The real question might be what it is going to take to get one of the two candidates to admit defeat. And whether either will say “you don’t have to get snippy about it.”
Posted by Frances Kingsbury at July 5, 2006 10:14 PM