The Final Decision in Mexico

The Mexican Tribunal with the constitutional role of determining the winner of Presidential elections reaches a decision on the last allocated day. Conservative Felipe Calderón is declared the winner over Socialist López Obrador with the margin of victory certified at “a razor-thin .55 percent of 41.6 million votes cast”. The political civil war of two party systems has spread to the immediate south in dramatic style.

Mexico's Calderon is president-elect: Just six years ago, many Mexicans were euphoric after Fox's historic election victory ended decades of one-party rule, but this year's vote reopened deep class divisions that have undermined Mexico's new political system.

The massive leftist movement lead by Obador is very much intact and angry.

Protesters defiant as conservative wins Mexico: In speeches foreseeing the adverse ruling, he has begun to transform his claims of fraud into an active challenge to the legitimacy of the country's institutional order. Calling Mr Calderón a "usurper", Mr López Obrador has floated the idea of forming a parallel government "of the people to rival that of the political mafia and white-collar criminals".

American Progressives, still bitter after losses in 2000 and 2004, are projecting their Marxist march of history paradigms upon this developing nation, regionally divided between an industrializing north and agrarian but resource rich south.

In Mexico, a Class War Looms: "Fraude!" "Rateros!" (Fraud! Thieves!) they screamed, as the judges were escorted by military police to their expensive vehicles. López Obrador had long accused the seven judges of bowing to Fox government pressures in exchange for personal benefit--three of the TRIFE members are expected to be promoted to the Supreme Court in the coming Calderón administration.

There is little doubt that trouble in Mexico has immediate reverberations in the United States and there is hope the new administration will focus on more than simply keeping the wealthy elite comfortably safe above the impoverished multitudes.

Still room for wisdom: What's needed is some real evidence that a Calderón presidency will reach beyond the traditional business-elite constituency of the PAN party that both he and Fox represent. The failure to create jobs sends millions of Mexico's poor across the border to work illegally in the United States. The failure to create hope turned the teachers' strike in Oaxaca into an uprising complete with uniformed guerrillas and AK-47 rifles.

The failure to gauge the depth of the anger in the hearts of poor Mexicans has left an opening for Lopez Obradór. If he were a wise man, he would cede the election and use his constituency in an orderly way to demand attention to the needs he claims to understand so well. If he were a patriotic man, he would end his aggression against Mexico's institutions.

If new President Calderón is wise, he will be restrained in response to the incessant emotional provocations of the left while listening very carefully to the lamentations of the poor.