Supporters of leftist candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador targeted federal offices in escalating protests over allegations of electoral fraud, as officials started a partial recount of votes from last month's disputed presidential election.
On Tuesday, hundreds of activists blockaded the entrance to the Agriculture Department and forced open highway toll booths for cars to stream through free-of-charge during rush hour -- the latest in a wave of protests to demand a total recount of the presidential election.
Lopez Obrador was the runner-up in an official count that gave ruling party candidate Felipe Calderon an advantage of 0.6 percent, or about 240,000 votes.
PHOTO: AP
The protests will continue all week, Lopez Obrador said, culminating in what he called an "extraordinary rally" in Mexico City on Sunday, the day officials are expected to finish recounting votes in about 9 percent of the nation's polling places.
"We are going to carry on our struggle ... We are sure we will triumph," the silvery haired leftist told tens of thousands of supporters in the capital's central plaza on Tuesday night.
Lopez Obrador, the former mayor of Mexico City, is demanding that officials count all 41 million ballots, but a tribunal said that they will only review votes in places where there is evidence the ballots could have been miscounted. The partial recount started yesterday.
While Lopez Obrador has urged his followers to remain peaceful, tensions are growing and some fear that he may not be able to prevent the demonstrations from erupting in violence.
The seizure of the toll booths, which gave more than 7,000 motorists a free passage to the capital, prompted President Vicente Fox's spokesman, Ruben Aguilar, to threaten for the first time the use of force. But demonstrators backed off before that could happen, abandoning the booths shortly after the end of morning rush hour.
Fox criticized the protests saying, "Democracy cannot advance without respect for others and above all without respect for institutions."
Late on Tuesday, the federal attorney general's office opened up a criminal investigation into the seizures, according to Mexican media. Officials at the agency could not immediately be reached.
An official in Lopez Obrador's leftist Democratic Revolution Party said the occupying of toll booths was the start of a new type of protest that would take place across the nation.
"Until now we have concentrated an important part of our protests in the capital, but in this new stage we are going to carry out actions all over the country," party secretary-general Guadalupe Acosta said. "They will be coordinated, national actions with the same objective: that they open the boxes and count the votes."
The Agriculture Department in Mexico City was bockaded on Tuesday by demonstrations for more than six hours.
Lopez Obrador supporters who gathered in front of the nation's top electoral court on Monday night raised their fists in defiance.
Through the noise of rushing papers and whirring belts at a print factory in Kyoto, two creators watch their photo essay come to life in broadsheet form — part of an effort to win new audiences in the age of artificial intelligence (AI). Despite the decline of the publishing industry, self-publication and handmade “zine” magazines are growing in popularity in Japan, reflecting the nation’s enduring love of paper in the digital era. While speaking to Agence France-Presse at the plant, his hands black with ink, one of the creators, Kazuma Obara, said: “I think [paper] is a medium that engages all five
‘ABSURD MISTAKE’: The election commission said that there had been a failure to anticipate turnout after 14 polling stations ran short of ballot papers South Korean riot police yesterday cleared protesters from a Seoul polling station after a 35-hour blockade sparked by a shortage of ballot papers during local elections earlier this week. Wednesday’s election was the first nationwide vote since South Korean President Lee Jae-myung took office following the ouster of Yoon Suk-yeol over his short-lived martial law declaration. Lee’s ruling Democratic Party swept most races, but failed to flip the crucial Seoul mayoral seat. The South Korean National Election Commission apologized, blaming a failure to anticipate turnout after 14 polling stations in Seoul ran short of ballot papers. Some polling stations stayed open until 10pm to
France experienced its hottest spring on record, the French weather service said on Tuesday, after an exceptional early heat wave that also broke highs for the season in England and Wales. Meteo-France said the average nationwide temperature over March to May was 13.8°C — about 1.7°C above the norm, and surpassing records set in 2011 and 2020. “The warmest spring since records began in 1900,” it said in a bulletin. All three months were warmer than average, but the onset of an “unprecedented heatwave” late last month pushed the mercury to highs typically seen at the height of the summer. “Our country had never
A Sherpa guide was found crawling to base camp on Mount Everest a week after he went missing and was reunited with his family, who had given up hope he would return. Dawa Sherpa was last seen on Friday last week descending the mountain, but he did not reach base camp even though his client did. The pair were among the last climbers on the mountain as the climbing season came to an end and the route was dismantled. Dawa was located by a cleaning crew on Thursday morning as he was crawling down the snowy slopes around the Khumbu Icefall, just above
RSS