Tuesday, September 05, 2006

Christian Science Monitor: Conservative declared winner in Mexico. Revolution?

At last, a victor in Mexico
[snip]
Unlike Al Gore in 2000, Mexico's runner-up Andrés Manuel López Obrador (aka AMLO) has refused to concede defeat. The populist leader - who has slept in a tent with his followers in the middle of Mexico City for more than a month - has vowed to set up a "parallel" government and says that Mexico needs a "revolution."

[snip] But, never underestimate the power of working together to stop 'unruliness':

"Both parties have pragmatic reasons to work together to counterbalance the unruly behavior of the PRD," says David Shirk, director of the Trans-border Institute at the University of San Diego. "It's actually a good thing, in terms of coalition-building, made possible by the PRI's weakness, the PAN's slight gains, and the fact that those two parties can identify a common adversary in the PRD."
[snip]
But, any sort of rebellion seems to depend on whether Obrador can get people to sit out in the middle of the capital until sept. 16:

On Mexico's Independence Day, Sept. 16, the day Obrador has called for the national convention and the day the military usually marches down streets that are now blocked by protesters, confrontations are expected. "It would not be hard to imagine that he gets the demonstrators to stay in place. This produces a clash with military. That will have reverberations that we can't anticipate," says Mr. de la Garza.

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