Thousands of leftists screaming election fraud blockaded Mexico's stock market building on Thursday in a demonstration that failed to halt trading but brought tempers closer to the breaking point on the fifth day of mass protests.
The exchange, a symbol of free-market economics in Mexico, stands on the elegant Reforma Boulevard that was seized on Sunday by supporters of leftist presidential candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador.
About 3,000 protesters sat and lay down in front of the gleaming black dome and tower and an adjacent skyscraper housing foreign bank headquarters early on Thursday, preventing employees from entering for most of the morning.
PHOTO: AFP
They left around 11am, jeering at workers lining up to get inside and threatening to return yesterday.
"We're leaving now. This was a show of what we can start to do," said Graco Ramirez, a senator-elect from Lopez Obrador's Party of the Democratic Revolution, or PRD.
Trading is carried out electronically and was unaffected. The market's main index slipped in early trade but was around 0.5 percent higher in afternoon trade.
Lopez Obrador is heading street protests to pressure Mexico's electoral court into ordering a full recount of votes in the July 2 presidential election he narrowly lost to conservative ruling party candidate Felipe Calderon.
Later on Thursday, he told supporters in Mexico City's historic Zocalo square that future protest action would depend on what the court decides.
"If there is no vote-by-vote recount, we are not going to permit the imposition [of Calderon as president]," he said.
Thousands of leftist protesters have seized the vast Zocalo square and Reforma Boulevard this week, causing five consecutive days of traffic chaos.
Calderon won the election with a margin of less than 1 percentage point, but Lopez Obrador claims he was the victim of massive fraud.
The electoral court has until Aug. 31 to decide on the recount, meaning the deadlock could drag on for at least another month.
EU observers say they found no evidence of fraud, and Calderon says his victory was clean. His lawyers say they expect at least a partial recount.
The new president will take office on Dec 1. Outgoing President Vicente Fox, whose election victory in 2000 ended seven decades of one-party rule, was barred under Mexican law from seeking re-election.
The protests have so far been peaceful, but the chaos is fueling anger in a society increasingly polarized between Lopez Obrador's mostly poor supporters and better-off Mexicans who tend to favor Calderon.
"This is an abuse," shouted a man who tried to enter the office tower adjacent to the stock exchange but was pushed away by protesters who had to be restrained by leaders pleading with them to back off.
The demonstrations have inspired some creative commuting.
As a helicopter landed on the skyscraper's roof, drawing catcalls from the crowd, Citibank pension fund salesman Ricardo Conconi, who normally drives to work from the city's more affluent south, sped by in a tourist tricycle rickshaw.
Clutching a briefcase as his panting driver pedaled, he joked about his new form of transportation: "In spite of everything, I'm getting to work more relaxed."
Asian perspectives of the US have shifted from a country once perceived as a force of “moral legitimacy” to something akin to “a landlord seeking rent,” Singaporean Minister for Defence Ng Eng Hen (黃永宏) said on the sidelines of an international security meeting. Ng said in a round-table discussion at the Munich Security Conference in Germany that assumptions undertaken in the years after the end of World War II have fundamentally changed. One example is that from the time of former US president John F. Kennedy’s inaugural address more than 60 years ago, the image of the US was of a country
BLIND COST CUTTING: A DOGE push to lay off 2,000 energy department workers resulted in hundreds of staff at a nuclear security agency being fired — then ‘unfired’ US President Donald Trump’s administration has halted the firings of hundreds of federal employees who were tasked with working on the nation’s nuclear weapons programs, in an about-face that has left workers confused and experts cautioning that the Department of Government Efficiency’s (DOGE’s) blind cost cutting would put communities at risk. Three US officials who spoke to The Associated Press said up to 350 employees at the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) were abruptly laid off late on Thursday, with some losing access to e-mail before they’d learned they were fired, only to try to enter their offices on Friday morning
Cook Islands officials yesterday said they had discussed seabed minerals research with China as the small Pacific island mulls deep-sea mining of its waters. The self-governing country of 17,000 people — a former colony of close partner New Zealand — has licensed three companies to explore the seabed for nodules rich in metals such as nickel and cobalt, which are used in electric vehicle (EV) batteries. Despite issuing the five-year exploration licenses in 2022, the Cook Islands government said it would not decide whether to harvest the potato-sized nodules until it has assessed environmental and other impacts. Cook Islands Prime Minister Mark Brown
STEADFAST DART: The six-week exercise, which involves about 10,000 troops from nine nations, focuses on rapid deployment scenarios and multidomain operations NATO is testing its ability to rapidly deploy across eastern Europe — without direct US assistance — as Washington shifts its approach toward European defense and the war in Ukraine. The six-week Steadfast Dart 2025 exercises across Bulgaria, Romania and Greece are taking place as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine approaches the three-year mark. They involve about 10,000 troops from nine nations and represent the largest NATO operation planned this year. The US absence from the exercises comes as European nations scramble to build greater military self-sufficiency over their concerns about the commitment of US President Donald Trump’s administration to common defense and
RSS