Is victory worth any cost?

USA Today (Estados Unidos)
Editorial/Opinion
7/17/2006

Ever since the July 2 election in Mexico, leftist candidate Andrés Manuel López Obrador has been crying foul. The results had him being narrowly overtaken by rightist candidate Felipe Calderón in the final hours of counting. He suspects fraud and wants a recount.

Americans can relate. In 2000, Republican George W. Bush and Democrat Al Gore sparred over the Florida results for more than a month before the U.S. Supreme Court stepped in.

But López Obrador has gone one step further than Gore did. Not only is he demanding a recount, he is organizing civil resistance campaigns to pressure Mexico's election court to grant him one. Those efforts, which reached a fever pitch with a huge rally in Mexico City on Sunday, show a destructive win-at-all-costs attitude that could undermine respect for Mexico's nascent democratic institutions. Extended political turmoil or violence could also undermine Mexico's economy, sending even more illegal immigrants into the USA.

López Obrador is, of course, within his rights to seek a recount and to make the case for such an action in the court of public opinion. And, at the end of the day, it is not inconceivable that the court will side with him. He might even be declared the winner after a recount.

But he crosses a line when he tries to pressure or intimidate the court into granting a recount by putting large numbers of supporters on the streets and making unsubstantiated claims of fraud.

Mexico, though, might yet settle the election with more dignity than some local, state and federal officials displayed in Florida's fracas. It has a specially created seven-member election court empowered to decide when, where and whether recounts are in order.

This type of system can get around a major issue in Florida, which was whether it was fair to conduct recounts only in jurisdictions chosen by the Gore campaign, and where local election officials were sympathetic to his cause. It also would bypass blatantly partisan election officials such as Katherine Harris, Florida's secretary of state and now member of Congress, who showed scant interest in neutrality or integrity.

But like any other court, Mexico's election court needs to be seen as impartial and insulated from political pressure. López Obrador's actions ill serve that cause.

They also raise serious questions about his commitment to truthfulness. As evidence of the alleged fraud, he recently showed a video of a man putting multiple ballots in a box. But the man was quickly identified as a legitimate election official transferring presidential ballots mistakenly placed in a legislative ballot box. If he was not intent on fanning the flames of partisan and class discontent, López Obrador would have investigated the video before making such claims.

Gore realized there was a time to fight and a time to concede. So did Richard Nixon, who did not even challenge his narrow loss in 1960 despite evidence of vote rigging in Illinois. Both put the nation's interests above personal ambition. As he weighs his next move, López Obrador would do well to heed their example.