Chicago Tribune Editorial - Mexico has a president

Chicago Tribune Editorial - Mexico has a president
Copyright © 2006, Chicago Tribune
Published September 6, 2006

There used to be little suspense about the outcome of Mexico's presidential races. The Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, had it in the bag long before the first ballot was cast. That desultory routine ended in 2000 with the thrilling election of Vicente Fox. Mexico ended 71 years of rule by one party ... and did so peacefully.

Sadly, it's not clear that Mexico will have another peaceful transition. On Tuesday, weeks after the voting, the Federal Electoral Tribunal finally declared conservative Felipe Calderon the president-elect. Calderon defeated leftist Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador by a scant 233,831 votes out of 41.6 million cast.

The tribunal found, by a unanimous vote, that the election, while not perfect, was clean, fair and transparent. But Lopez Obrador won't accept that result. He insists the election was stolen from him. He has organized massive protests, threatened to shut down the government and accused the judges of taking bribes.

The tribunal--and the Federal Elections Institute, which ran the election--form the cornerstone of hard-fought electoral reforms that Mexicans won in the early 1990s to eliminate the fraud that kept the PRI in power. Independent from the legislative and executive branches, they are responsible for the rise of opposition parties that led to the historic 2000 election of Fox. (Calderon is from the same party as Fox. The PRI finished a distant third in the presidential balloting.)

To their credit, the members of the tribunal refused to yield to demands for a new election, even as thousands of Lopez Obrador's supporters demonstrated in the capital, snarling traffic and blocking access to banks and other institutions. The court refused to let street protests circumvent the political process.

Thousands of Lopez Obrador's supporters are still camped on the Zocalo plaza, setting off fireworks and crying fraud. Lawmakers from Lopez Obrador's party successfully blocked Fox from taking the podium on Sunday to deliver his final state-of-the-nation address. Lopez Obrador talks of serving as president of a "parallel government."

All of this leaves Mexico on shaky ground. Lopez Obrador has failed to intimidate the independent election commission. He has failed to overturn the result. But a campaign to undermine Calderon's presidency could, in time, threaten Mexico's stability. Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador is no longer running against Felipe Calderon. He's running against the future of Mexico.