Mexico's top electoral court threw out leftists' allegations of massive fraud in last month's presidential election on Monday, handing almost certain victory to conservative candidate Felipe Calderon, according to Reuters. The seven judges voted unanimously to reject most of the legal complaints by left-wing candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, who said he was robbed of victory in the July 2 vote. Calderon, a former energy minister from the ruling National Action Party, won the election by just 0.58 of a percentage point or 244,000 votes, the initial result showed. The judges fell short of formally declaring Calderon the winner but said there were only marginal changes to the original results after recounts and annulments at some of the most fiercely contested polling stations. "Based on the annulments that were deemed necessary, all the parties lost a considerable amount of votes but that did not affect the results," judge Jose Luna said. The Mexican peso firmed 0.77 percent as investors were convinced that pro-business Calderon will now take over from President Vicente Fox on Dec. 1. Lopez Obrador says there were serious irregularities at more than half the polling stations. He has demanded a full recount of all 41 million votes cast and has launched street protests that have shut down central Mexico City. The court annulled results from scores of polling stations after a partial recount earlier this month because of irregularities but there was no sign of huge fraud, the judges said. "We can tell people that today their votes were worth something and that they are definitive," said another judge, Fernando Ojesto. The election was the bitterest in Mexico's modern history and split the country between left and right. "COUP D'ETAT" Lopez Obrador insists he won the election and that a court ruling in favor of Calderon would merely complete the fraud. "It would be an abuse of the people's rights, a rupture of the constitutional order and a coup d'etat, which is offensive to millions of Mexicans," he told supporters on Sunday in Mexico City's central Zocalo square, where they have been camping overnight in a sit-in for almost a month. Calderon, who campaigned on pro-business policies and would be an ally of the United States, says the election was clean and has called on Lopez Obrador to drop his street protests. He was confident the court would declare him winner. "We are sure that the only thing that will come out of these legal challenges is that Felipe Calderon won the presidency legitimately," said top aide Juan Camilo Mourino. The leftist, who has vowed to overhaul economic policies to put the poor first, insists he will not give up. Some 50 supporters marched through the Zocalo with a fake coffin, marked "Democracy" The political crisis is the toughest test of Mexico's democracy since Fox's election victory six years ago ended seven decades of one-party rule. The electoral court already has ruled out a full recount and instead ordered votes counted again at just 9 percent of the polling stations. That failed to end the dispute. Calderon said the partial recount showed only minimal changes in the vote, while Lopez Obrador said it proved many ballot boxes were tampered with. He says almost 200,000 votes disappeared from some or were discovered in others. The court has until Sept. 6 to formally declare a president-elect. Its decisions are final and cannot be appealed. If Calderon's victory is confirmed by the court, Lopez Obrador says he will either lead a civil resistance movement against his rival or set up some kind of parallel government.
