The final accounting of the just past Mexican elections is taking place at this time. There will be no nationwide recount of the Presidential vote, as happened last time. Then the difference, nationwide, between the conservative PAN nominee Calderon Hinojosa and the leftist Lopez Obrador of the PRD hinged on a vote difference of less than 300,000. The percentage difference was such that a recount was required by law.
That election, along with the election of the year 2000 went well, with clear processes and much cross-checking and re-validating. The elections of 1994 and 1988 were both probably won by the PAN candidate, but poobahs and shamans sitting in dark rooms somewhere in Oz, decided that the nation was not "ready" for the election of a president by something like "voters". The leftwing press and others of the international Mitterandista set howled to high heaven that, in 1988 Cuauhtemoc Cardenas had won the election and that Carlos Salinas de Gortari's PRI party had stolen the election through "faulty tabulating". The actual fact is that Manuel Clouthier, the governor of Sinaloa had won the election with almost 55% of the vote. When it became clear that San Luis Potosi, Coahuila, Nuevo Leon, Chihuahua, Sonora, and both States on the Baja Peninsula were voting strongly for Clouthier....the computerised tabulations suddenly went dark and could not be restarted. Since the press in Mexico and most of the rest of the world is marxist, the howling immediately began that Cardenas had been robbed.
A reporter for the "international press" was explaining this to me in the bar at the Hotel Majestic....right on the Zocalo (main plaza) across from the Presidential Palace and well placed for a magnificent view of the National Cathdral right next door to the left, looking out.
"Yeah, the PRI stole the election just like they always do. You get used to it after you've been here long enough"
El Gringo Viejo...even then....had pretty much been mired in Mexico for most of his life, and responded,"I thought that Clouthier had been the one that was rumoured to have won."
The reporter for the "international press" answered,"The names sound really similar if you don't speak Mexican, but it's pronounced 'car - DAY - naz'. I've been living here for the past four months off and on, and can pick up on it pretty well. The government party is afraid of Cardenas because his father expropriated the American oil companies and the common people are really with him."
El Gringo Viejo did not divulge his level of understanding of "Mexican" or how long he and his family had been dealing with Mexico. It is of interest, however, that the myth about Cardenas having won the 1988 election is now set in stone. It is like the 8 years of "prosperity" the William Jefferson Blythe "gave" the American people, when in fact he drove one recovery into the ground with his 1993 tax hikes and cause another recession through over-regulation and hyper-taxation ....now known as the Tech Bubble Recession....that was then, in fact inherited and cured by the next administration by means of significant tax cutting. So, in the socialist lexicon, four years of tax-induced recession becomes, "The Decade of Prosperity Brought on by Billy Jeff's Feeling Our Pain". Likewise, a probable loss by a repressive, oligarchical leftist political party caused by a popular, Santa Clause-ish, rightwing candidate becomes a "....theft by the PRI of the Cardenas's electoral victory."
The theft was accomplished again in 1994, after the assassination of the more-or-less conservative PRI replacement for Carlos Salinas, Luis Donaldo Colosio Murietta. A quickly arranged replacement candidate for the old government party, a nice boy named Ernest Zedillo Ponce de Leon, was put at the head of the PRI ticket, and promptly lost two debates against the very formidable Diego Fernandez de Ceballos of the PAN Conservatives. Once again the computers broke down in the early morning hours, and then the results were released after a couple of days showing that Ernesto Zedillo Ponce de Leon had won the election narrowly....but he had won.
Really left-wing candidates for President in Mexico have had a hard time of it since the administrations of Luis Echevarria Alvarez and Jose Lopez Portillo....two ardent and very corrupt marxists who served in the presidency from 1970 through 1982.
Oddly, the election processes that we are snickering about were actually improvements of a quantum measure. Votes were actually being counted and tabulated with accuracy and sent up the food chain. So the Istituto Federal Electoral, by the year 2000 had had a couple of dry-runs which permitted them to execute the 2000 and 2006 elections with a very high degree of accuracy and "transparency". No sane person doubted the outcomes of those two presidential election were anything other than what was published. In 2000, it was pretty much a blowout...with a majority going to the PAN candidate, and the 2006 election was a photo-finish squeaker....with a plurality going to the PAN candidate.
Now comes 2012. As previously written, we have the unlikely phenomena of a PAN presidential candidate carrying the State of Tamaulipas, but losing the election, nationwide with a few exceptions. At the same time, the winner of the election comes in with substantially fewer votes than what the opinion polling was showing towards the end. Here, therefore, lie the IFs, ANDs, and BUTs. In States where Lopez-Obrador won with a plurality or majority, few if any of his leftist cohorts gained seats over and above what they already had. Gains were made by the conservative PAN congressional and senatorial candidates of the lady, Vasquez-Mota's party.
And with the great victory of the PRI presidential candidate, Pen~a Nieto, somehow or another his party....the Old Grey Lady of Mexico's political pantheon...fell from having a strong plurality in the Lower House of Congress.....to now a weak second. The PAN...Vasquez-Mota's party....now has a very heavy-duty plurality that will be a force in the coming six years. State congresses also shifted to the right, with many more seats being held by the "blanquiazul" (white and blue).
Early on in the counts these disparities were being noticed, but it was thought that it was mainly because, quite frankly, the rank and file voters of the PRI and PRD are not what we would call, say....intellectually well-equipped. But now there are numerous, believable stories about Pen~a Nieto's forces passing out what may be millions of "charge-cards" with amounts of as little as 100 pesos to as much as 500 pesos pre-programmed into them. They were good for use in various convenience and grocery stores. The amounts are small, but at the high end, 35 dollars (500 pesos) would be enough, wisely spent, to larder a family of four for a week in much of Mexico, with basics and a few splurgie food items....(six thick cut pork chops...about 2 dollars, two rib-eye steaks 20 ounces total....about 6 dollars....whole roasting chicken around 3 dollars, and many fruits and vegetables are cheap by American standards as is the rice and bean and pepper selections available everywhere in Mexico).
We are not here to cry "election fraud"....but the incongruousness of the voting pattern looks a lot like that stupid parlour game (for perverts) called "Twister", perhaps some or all the OROGs can remember it from the ancient days. And no, El Gringo Viejo never did , and never will play "Twister" in front of any audience greater than zero. For those who did not know or cannot remember, check here:
There are things demanding the attention of your humble servant. This afternoon we shall return to the firing line.
El Gringo Viejo
