Mexican Democracy is at risk! | Indymedia Australia

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Sun, 08/07/2012 - 11:01pm

International public opinion,
To whom it may concern,

With great concern we feel the need to inform you about the way millions of Mexicans feel regarding the countless irregularities that have occurred during the electoral process in Mexico.
The student movement # YoSoy132, to which many of us belong, affirms its nonpartisan, autonomous, anti-neoliberal, peaceful, pluralistic, democratic, and inclusive character and, therefore, claim all sorts of legal and socio-political forms of struggle. It is a movement of horizontal structure, organized in committees, assemblies, commissions, at the local, state, national and international levels, representing unity and consensus of hundreds of thousands of Mexicans. In that sense, we are in favor of the demands of citizens are met and we claim for the clarification of electoral and criminal offenses that occurred before, during and after the Election Day.
We denounce that the election of July 1 did not unfold in a peaceful and legal atmosphere, and that non-democratic practices prevailed on it, like violence treats by the state, and vote buying and coercion. Taking advantage of the low social-economical level and needs of our people, using media manipulation, with rigged polls and other unlawful practices that alter the essence of free, informed, reasoned and critical suffrage.
We condemn an electoral process that is flawed from its very origin; it is affected by institutions deliberately unable to prevent and punish the countless anomalies that were held. Therefore, we declare that the electoral process is irregular enough to affirm that it was not a democratic process.
Although the final results of the election have yet to come, and we have and we will be constantly observing vote counts, we identified that the imposition of Enrique Peña Nieto is a process that has been planned for several years by the Mexican and foreign powers, in violation of national sovereignty, which seek to ensure the adoption of neo-liberal structural reforms, such as the labor, Energy, Security and Tax reforms. And at the same time, to justify the defense of a political system full of complicity and perks that only seeks to pretend legitimacy through elections.

Within many irregularities that have been identified throughout the electoral process is important to highlight some examples:

• Media imposition: Enrique Peña Nieto was outlined as a candidate to be imposed from the beginning, driven by Televisa the largest media company in Mexico, among others. Media coverage presents the candidate with a partial view at every time, and the media machinery of the company served to contain any problems that could be presented against the candidate. It is noteworthy that Mexico is undergoing a process of structural reforms in the field of Telecommunications, and would not be surprising that such support was conditional on the Television protectionism to maintain its monopoly. (Set of links 1)

• Purchase and vote coercion: (set of links 2)
o Buying: we have acknowledged abundant reports made by election observers and citizens on vote buying. Private homes, political parties facilities, and outside or near-by polling places were the most common. Around the country many people have reported payments of 500, 750, 1000, 1200, 1500 and 4000 Mexican pesos for vote buying. An NGO (Alianza Cívica: http://www.alianzacivica.org.mx/) reported that according to estimates by about 30% of votes cast in the country were subject to vote buying, most of these illegal practices are linked to the PRI, while recognizing that it happened in all the political parties.

o Vote coercion: Reports of vote coercion through intimidation and threats (mostly labor or physical related) were reported outside of the polling sites. A report of men armed with sticks out of a polling place which were threatening citizens to vote for certain party claiming; if you don’t “you know already what would happen."

o Gifts for votes: one of the most obvious evidence comes from some videos of people testify using prepaid supermarket cards as they were given in exchange for his vote for the PRI. There are even videos of people who took to the streets to protest and demand the payment promised by the PRI in exchange for their vote or their services during the election days, as these payments were never made.

• Manipulation of electoral polls: During the campaign, most polling agencies gave up a lead of 20 points to Enrique Peña Nieto (PRI) over the PAN and PRD candidates. This assumed advantage fluctuated throughout the electoral campaigns, but it never was under the two digits. However, on the night of July 1, the official preliminary count (PREP) of the 7,500 polling stations, with a margin of error of half a point, took down the gap between Peña Nieto and Lopez Obrador to 6.87 points. We affirm that the errors that commit most of the polling agencies were not accidental, and served as media tools to manipulate and control the opinion of voters. The media companies involved in the inaccurate polls were justified, and in some cases even apologized for his apparent error (Set of links 3).

• Is the official preliminary count (PREP) reliable? Various scholars and citizens have challenged this instrument used to make a preliminary count of the vote. Physicists, mathematicians and statisticians, national and foreign, have highlighted the strange statistical behavior during the vote counting, arguing that its behavior appears to be dependent, indicating that the algorithm could be manipulated. Different specialists are working with real PREP data at this time in order to make a more accurate diagnosis (Set of links 4).

• Excesses in money campaign: the excesses of Enrique Peña Nieto campaign team was obvious to many of us, as the media coverage and political advertising displayed on the streets of the candidate was much higher than for the rest of the candidates. This can be coupled with the collusion that the candidate had with different media companies (above). The auditing process has already begun by the authority, but is very important to give a close following-up, because if true this would be the biggest electoral fraud committed by the PRI so far.

• Vote counting in electoral districts: thousands of citizens have decided to go to the places where the votes are counted and witness for themselves the alleged fraud. They have compiled various irregularities in the process such as milking of votes, misallocation of votes, ballots that were left over or duplicated, and ballots or entire polling boxes in the hands of supporters of political parties. For some of these cases the relevant reports and denounces have been presented. For many others, due to the non-partisans character of the citizen, the allegations could not be presented, but in many cases they have footage of all this irregularities.

We propose that the international community must adopt a critical position on the electoral process that is taking place in Mexico, at all time that while being at risk the democratic life of a country like Mexico, this threats the democracy of all free nations. We invite the international press to investigate, disseminate and report on allegations that we do here, always being impartial, objective and with an insatiable hunger in their quest for the truth.

Thank you very much,

If we do not burn together, who will light this darkness?

International Assembly of #Yosoy132 (yosoy132australia@gmail.com)

Links 1: Televisa – Peña Nieto
English-
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/interactive/2012/jun/08/mexico-media-sca...
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/jun/08/mexico-presidential-candidat...
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/jun/12/televisa-mexicans-tv...
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/interactive/2012/jun/08/mexico-media-sca...
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/interactive/2012/jun/08/mexico-media-sca...
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/jun/08/mexico-televisa-files-genuin...
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/jun/07/mexico-presidency-tv-dirty-t...
http://www.theage.com.au/world/eyes-have-it-for-mexicos-cutie-20120630-2...