World Opinion Roundup
By Jefferson Morley Posted at 11:23 AM ET, 09/6/2006
Mexico Worries About Violence
Mexico's presidential election may be over, but the country's democratic crisis is only deepening.
That's what some Mexican online commentators are saying as the government and president-elect Felipe Calderon confront thousands of supporters of leftist candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador who on Tuesday rejected the national electoral tribunal's decision that Calderon narrowly won the July 2 vote.
The possibility of a violent conclusion to the confrontation between the government and the demonstrators is now becoming part of the country's political discussion
Mexico is "a country torn apart," declared Alvaro Delgado in Proceso (in Spanish), the country's leading political newsweekly on the eve of the tribunal's decision. The country's "severe political crisis is accelerating and will, if it is not headed off, degenerate into a constitutional descent into violence."
The country's entrepreneurial and political elite, wrote another Proceso columnist, Denise Dresser, have their "eyes wide shut."
"They avoid the challenges and do not understand how great they have become," she wrote. "They diminish the post-electoral crisis when they will have to face it anyway. They think the storm will pass just by ignoring it."
Lopez Obrador has called on his supporters to stay in Mexico City's central square and main boulevard where they have camped out for two months. His Party of Democratic Revolution plans to hold a national convention on September 16 with the goal of establishing a "parallel government" that Lopez Obrador will lead to "re-establish constitutional order."
The uncertainty of what will happen next is generating worries of a violent crackdown. One of the formative public memories of Mexican politics is the so-called Tlatelolco Massacre on October 2, 1968, in which the PRI government crushed a burgeoning student movement with gunfire that killed scores of peaceful demonstrators. The government then denied all responsibility. With Mexico City again engulfed by street protests, there is fear that history will repeat itself.
"Following growing rumors that soldiers would be used to forcefully evict the protesters," reported the Mexico News on Tuesday, "López Obrador in recent days has called on the military to 'avoid the temptation of fulfilling orders to repress the people.'" ...
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