Sept. 7, 2006
 
EDITORIAL: Mexico’s Voters, Courts Have Spoken
 
By Dale McFeatters
Scripps Howard News Service
 
Mexico's highest electoral court has unanimously declared Felipe Calderon the winner of that country's disputed presidential election, and that should be the end of it.
 
The court found some irregularities in the July 2 balloting, but nothing significant enough to warrant throwing out Calderon's half-a-percent victory, a conclusion supported by foreign observers. At some point an election has to be final.
 
But the loser, Andres Manual Obrador, a noisy populist and former mayor of Mexico City who has paralyzed the capital with ongoing protests, still refuses to accept the outcome. He has pledged to form an "alternate government," "refound the Republic" and somehow have himself installed as president at the Dec. 1 inauguration.
 
Presumably, then he would reward his followers with generous state pensions and jobs on massive public-works projects that Mexico has no way of affording. Mobs goaded into marching down political dead ends by fiery demagogues are a drearily recurring theme in Latin American politics. In an outburst that made Mexico look embarrassingly Third World, Obrador's supporters seized control of the congressional chamber last Friday to prevent outgoing President Vicente Fox from giving his state-of-the-nation speech.
 
Mexico has made important strides politically and economically during the six-year tenure of Fox, who in 2000 ended 71 years of corrupt, one-party rule. Calderon is of the same party as Fox, although not his preferred successor. But the National Action Party's record of achievement seemed to have merited a second term.
 
Meanwhile, Calderon has been trying to woo left-of-center legislators and the more moderate of Obrador's supporters. Obrador has been of some help in this regard because his actions have made Calderon's campaign depiction of him as a sort of Mexican Hugo Chavez look not so very far-fetched.
 
One hopes that Obrador will back down before Fox and Calderon are forced to act. Free and fair elections -- and this is only modern Mexico's second -- are important, but so is the rule of law. It is not a democracy when the outcome of an election can be overturned in the streets.
 
Contact Dale McFeatters at McFeattersD@SHNS.com. Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, http://www.shns.com