MEXICO CITY - Mexico's young democracy entered uncharted territory Sunday as the Party of the Democratic Revolution, or PRD, put the finishing touches on what officials said would be 152 lawsuits aimed at overturning results of the July 2 presidential election.
Top leaders of the party, known by its Spanish initials PRD, are challenging the count in all 300 of Mexico's electoral districts. Sunday was the opening shot fired in what is sure to be a nasty legal battle to challenge Felipe CalderÃ³n's narrow 0.58 percent margin of victory.
The PRD expected to file all of its legal challenges late Sunday and today, the legal deadline for protesting the electoral count that showed CalderÃ³n, of the ruling National Action Party, or PAN, winning by about 243,000 votes over the PRD's AndrÃ©s Manuel LÃ³pez Obrador.
It'll be up to the Federal Electoral Tribunal, known by its Spanish acronym TRIFE, to determine whether there were irregularities that warrant opening up and counting the more than 41 million ballots cast.
Horacio Duarte, who is one of the architects of the PRD's electoral challenge, told McClatchy Newspapers on Sunday that his party would present 152 lawsuits. Those suits will document roughly 50,000 inconsistencies between the computerized vote count on July 2 and the official recount that ended Thursday, when CalderÃ³n declared victory around 4 a.m.
Specifically, Duarte alleged that on election night there were "pre-designed results." He alleged vote-counting software was vulnerable and that the Federal Electoral Institute, or IFE, which polls show is held in high esteem by most Mexicans, allowed someone to manipulate results to show CalderÃ³n continually in the lead. During the official recount days later, LÃ³pez Obrador led almost continually until the overnight hours, where CalderÃ³n passed him by less than 300,000 votes.
"The electoral authority allowed the management of databases," alleged Duarte. "It's a real problem, concrete and documented."
Earlier Sunday, Rene Miranda, in charge of the IFE's computer count, told reporters that CalderÃ³n appeared to have a large lead at the start of counting and led throughout on election night because the north of Mexico, where CalderÃ³n won handily, reported results faster than southern regions that are the stronghold of LÃ³pez Obrador. Miranda called the results "precise, unassailable and reliable."
LÃ³pez Obrador on Saturday gathered hundreds of thousands of his supporters to Mexico City's ancient city square to vow a protracted battle to be declared winner of the tight election.
Mexico's electoral court has decided hundreds of complaints in local, state and federal races since its creation in 1996. However, the TRIFE has never been asked to count all ballots in a presidential race, and election law appears to be silent on the matter. CalderÃ³n insists there is nothing explicitly allowing for a booth-by-booth, vote-by-vote recount. LÃ³pez Obrador insists there is nothing in the law that prevents it.
"Mexico is in a situation that it hasn't been in before," acknowledged a TRIFE official.
The electoral court was created in response to decades of election rigging by the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, which ruled without interruption from 1929 to 2000. In 2000, Vicente Fox was elected Mexico's first opposition president, leading what Mexicans called the first "transition" government.