Presidential election in Mexico 2006

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In the 2006 presidential election in Mexico on July 2, 2006 , Roberto Madrazo ( PRI ), Felipe Calderón ( PAN ) and Andrés Manuel López Obrador ( PRD ) competed against each other. Two months after the presidential election in Mexico, the conservative politician Felipe Calderón was declared the winner on September 5, 2006. He was officially inducted into office on December 1 amid ongoing protests.

In addition to the Senate and House of Representatives elections, the presidential election was part of the 2006 general election in Mexico.

Run-up to the elections

In the run-up to the elections, it was expected worldwide that Mexico would continue the Latin American trend towards left-wing government formation with Andrés Manuel López Obrador and, alongside Fidel Castro in Cuba , Hugo Chávez in Venezuela , Lula da Silva in Brazil , Evo Morales in Bolivia , Tabaré Vázquez in Uruguay , Michelle Bachelet in Chile and Alan García in Peru another Latin American country will get a social democratic or “socialist” government. The poll results also slightly indicated a victory for López Obrador weeks before the election.

The PAN originally had very poor popularity ratings. Above all, the fact that large parts of the population were dissatisfied with the government under Vicente Fox and Felipe Calderón therefore had to distance himself from his own government, without questioning the ideological continuity of the policy, led to serious problems with the credibility of the Political party. The accusation has often been raised that Vicente Fox had strategically influenced the popularity of Felipe Calderón with popular measures at the end of his term of office (e.g. the attempt as a conservative party to legalize private drug use) and thus abused his office. Nevertheless, the PAN was able to overcome the polls low by making a radical change in its election campaign strategy.

Candidates and Results

Party / alliance candidate slogan be right Percentages
PAN Felipe Calderón Para que vivamos mejor
"So that we live better" 		15,000,284 35.89
Coalición Por el Bien de Todos
( PRD , PT , Convergencia ) 		Andrés Manuel López Obrador Por el bien de todos, primero los pobres
"For the common good, first the poor" 		14,756,350 35.31
Alianza por México
( PRI , PVEM ) 		Roberto Madrazo Mover a México para que las cosas se hagan
"Moving Mexico so that things happen" 		9,301,441 22.26
PASC Patricia Mercado Castro Palabra de mujer
"word of a woman" 		1,128,850 2.70
Partido Nueva Alianza Roberto Campa Cifrián Uno de tres
"One of three" 		401,804 0.96
unregistered candidates 297,989 0.71
Invalid ballot 904.604 2.16
Total 41,791,322 100

controversy

State winners; blue: Felipe Calderón, yellow: Andrés Manuel López Obrador

In the count, the PRI emerged as the clear loser of the three big parties, while Felipe Calderón unexpectedly won against Andrés Manuel López Obrador by around 0.58% or 244,000 votes. Andrés Manuel López Obrador then challenged the result on the grounds that there had been major irregularities in the official count. Election observers from the European Union, on the other hand, characterized the election as largely fair.

On August 5, 2006, a ruling by the Mexican Federal Electoral Court rejected the complete recounting of the votes - however, fewer than 10,000 of the 130,500 polling stations were re-counted between August 9 and 14. These are those ballot boxes in which the representatives of the political parties had timely and bureaucratically correct doubts about the correctness of the count. This was possible during the counting on election day and again for a week afterwards. Andrés Manuel López Obrador, on the other hand, had already announced at several demonstrations in the run-up to the verdict that he would continue the peaceful protest actions if the electoral court does not order the complete recounting of the ballot papers. As expected, he was therefore disappointed by the decision of the Federal Electoral Court and announced that the protests would intensify.

The protests were therefore significantly expanded in the run-up to the announcement of the second election result and now also blocked the cities of Guadalajara and Monterrey as well as the motorway to Acapulco . On August 10, 2006, a protester was shot dead by a sniper during a protest march in Oaxaca . The angry demonstrators accused the government of Oaxaca of being responsible for this act and of covering up the election fraud.

On September 1, 2006, there was a scandal when the MPs of the López Obrador party in parliament prevented Vicente Fox from reading his government report. The accusations against Vicente Fox are now getting louder and louder that he either shouldn't have been president because he wasn't Mexican - but in any case shouldn't abuse his office to help Calderón gain more popularity.

Two months after the presidential election in Mexico, the conservative politician Felipe Calderón was declared the winner on September 5, 2006. After deliberations, the seven judges at the Federal Electoral Court finally voted unanimously to declare the election valid. According to the now official final result, Calderón, the candidate of the ruling National Action Party (PAN), has a lead of 235,329 votes (0.56 percent) over Andrés Manuel López Obrador of the Democratic Revolution Party (PRD).

With a law passed in Mexico for the transparency of all government and social institutions, the political magazine Proceso has called for all electoral documents to be obtained from IFE in order to recount all elections. However, this request was rejected because the files and ballot papers were not documents, but only expressions of the will of the people .

Web links

photos

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Political turmoil in Mexico . Telepolis , December 2, 2006
  2. ^ Obrador loyalists occupy parliament . In: Die Welt , September 4, 2006
  3. ↑ Calderón on the way to becoming President . Telepolis , September 2, 2006