Conservative Wins Mexico's Protracted Presidential Election

Conservative candidate Felipe Calderón has won the final official count of Mexico's presidential poll by a razor-thin margin but his main rival, the leftist Andrés Manuel López Obrador, has vowed to contest the result. With 99.56% of the vote counted, Mr Calderón had 35.82%, Mr López Obrador 35.37% with three other candidates sharing the remainder.

"We cannot accept these results," Mr López Obrador said yesterday at his campaign headquarters. "We triumphed and we are going to prove it."

The charismatic champion of Mexico's downtrodden said he would take his claim that the election was full of irregularities to the electoral tribunal within the four days allowed by law. He also called supporters to an assembly in the capital's central plaza tomorrow, suggesting a strategy of street protests could follow.

About 42 million Mexicans voted in Sunday's election after a protracted and often dirty campaign. It was the first presidential poll since 71 years of single party rule ended in 2000. The provisional count immediately after polls closed gave Mr Calderón, the governing party candidate, an advantage of one percentage point, but was deemed inconclusive by the electoral authorities. The final official count of the tally sheets that accompany each ballot box began on Wednesday. Usually little more than a formality to confirm the provisional result, this count had the nation on tenterhooks through the night.

Mr López Obrador led until shortly before dawn when tallies from Calderón strongholds reversed the situation. Minutes later a beaming Mr Calderón addressed hundreds of cheering supporters at his headquarters and called for the result to be respected. "This has been the most competitive election we've ever had," he said. "But it has been the most democratic in Mexico's history."

A few hours later Mr López Obrador shot back that his rival should be ashamed to declare himself the winner: "They know that there is nothing to celebrate. They know what they did."

The López Obrador camp claims Mr Calderón's supporters and the government orchestrated a subtle fraud while the votes were being counted so that the tally sheets did not reflect reality. They want the tribunal to order all the ballot boxes opened so there can be a vote-by-vote recount. According to a strict reading of the law, opening the boxes would annul the election.

This is not the first time the left has been so close, and yet so far, from power. In 1988 Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas was winning the election when a computer failure stopped the count. When the lights came on he had lost. Many on the left who were bitter that Cárdenas did not defend his claim to power more energetically hope Mr López Obrador will not give up pushing his.