Its official: Canada Only N.American country able to hold decisive election

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Monday, July 3, 2006 - 12:00 AM

Mexican election too close to name winner

By The Washington Post and The Associated Press

MEXICO CITY — Mexico's presidential election was too close to call Sunday, with voters bitterly divided between a leftist offering himself as a savior to the poor and a conservative warning that his rival's free-spending proposals threaten the economy.

Officials said they wouldn't be able to declare a winner until at least Wednesday in the election, which has major implications for the United States.

Felipe Calderón, 43, of outgoing President Vicente Fox's National Action Party, had been running an exceedingly close race with Andrés Manuel López Obrador, 52, of the leftist Democratic Revolution Party. The Institutional Revolutionary Party's Roberto Madrazo, 53, had been trailing in third place.

López Obrador said late Sunday that he would respect the delay in declaring a winner, "but I want the Mexican people to know that our figures show we won."

López Obrador said his party's exit polls showed he had won by 500,000 votes.

Calderón spoke minutes later, saying he, too, will respect the results but that the official preliminary results, as well as the exit polls, show he's the winner.

"We have no doubt that we have won," he said.

The specter of the two sides claiming victory and calling street protests hangs over Mexico's young democracy, key to U.S. interests in border security, immigration and drug smuggling.

Supporters of both candidates were already declaring victory and began loud street celebrations.

Fox appealed for calm amid fears that a close result would raise the potential for violence. Some López Obrador supporters have warned they won't accept his defeat if they think fraud might be involved.

Electoral officials said they could not release the results of Sunday night's quick count of the votes, which they previously said would happen only if the leading candidates were within 1 percentage point of each other. Luis Carlos Ugalde, president of the Federal Electoral Institute, said an official count would begin Wednesday, and a winner would be declared once it's complete.

The front-runners battled for the presidency in starkly different style.

López Obrador charmed voters with a dazzling mix of charisma and New Deal-style public-works proposals that he promised would create jobs for millions of poor Mexicans and stem illegal immigration to the U.S. Calderón ran a disciplined, dogged campaign focused on job creation and pledges that he would continue the "Foxismo" programs of the outgoing president.

With the illegal-immigration debate roiling the U.S. Congress, Mexico's presidential election has drawn unprecedented attention in the United States.

López Obrador, the candidate of the Democratic Revolutionary Party, or PRD, has generated the most unease among Americans because of his populist agenda, which includes renegotiating parts of the North American Free Trade Agreement, and left-leaning tendencies that have drawn comparisons to such adversaries of the Bush administration as Venezuela's Hugo Chávez and Bolivia's Evo Morales.

All three leading candidates have talked of trying to reach an immigration accord with the United States, but none has made it a central part of his campaign.

Instead, they have used the immigration controversy as a leaping-off point for touting their economic plans. Calderón set his gaze beyond Mexico with promises to attract foreign investment to create jobs that would dissuade Mexicans from leaving.

López Obrador turned inward, calling for huge, New Deal-style projects — such as a railroad system, new public universities and extensive housing construction — to stimulate employment and stem illegal immigration.

More than 20.6 million people of Mexican origin live in the United States, representing 58 percent of the nation's Hispanic population, according to the U.S. Census. There are also more than 6.2 million illegal Mexican immigrants in the U.S., accounting for 56 percent of the illegal-immigrant population, according to the Pew Hispanic Center.

Mexicans living in the U.S. were eligible to vote, but the registration numbers came in stunningly low, a trend some blamed on inadequate organization and the fact that a small registration fee was required. Only 32,632 Mexicans in the United States registered to vote, and of those, only 28,335 sent in ballots, according to Mexico's Federal Election Institute.

The Mexican government set up 86 polling stations along the 2,000-mile border, mostly for migrants who missed out on Mexico's historic absentee-ballot campaign.

But the special polls, meant for people away from their registered homes, had only 750 ballots each, apparently to prevent fraud. And hundreds of voters were turned away in Ciudad Juarez, across from El Paso, Texas, after 18 special polling booths ran out of ballots four hours before polls closed.

Enthusiasm in both camps built through the evening as each predicted that its candidate was winning. Hundreds of supporters gathered outside of López Obrador's home in a modest apartment building in Mexico City. They mobbed each car that came out of the garage and chanted "We're not moving until we're in the National Palace."

Calderón said he is "sure that this day will pass by in peace, because there is going to be great voter participation. ... Mexico today is moving forward in its contemporary history."

López Obrador flashed his signature thumbs-up sign after casting his ballot. Calderón voted in the upscale Las Aguilas neighborhood with his wife, Margarita Zavala, a Mexican senator.

This presidential contest had been the most competitive in modern Mexican history, the first true three-way race in a nation long shackled by one-party rule. Unprecedented numbers of undecided voters, as well as a growing middle class and the permanent class of desperately poor voters made the outcome difficult to predict in the final days.

The Calderón-López Obrador showdown was just one of more than 1,000 electoral contests decided Sunday. No single party is expected to win a majority in the legislature, meaning that the next president will face a daunting challenge in winning approval for his proposals, as well as a formidable check on his power.

Information from Reuters is included in this report

Copyright © 2006 The Seattle Times Company

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