Publius Pundit - Blogging the democratic revolution: "NEW TURMOIL IN MEXICO

AMLORALLY
Supporters of Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador in another protest.
Source: The Scotsman

Defeated Mexican presidential candidate, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, is not going down without a fight. It was a tough presidential race and he lost by a narrow margin, which has got to be tough. Knowing his peje character, it’s probably not surprising that he would react this way. A peje is a barracuda-like fish that swims around in AMLO’s native Tabasco state’s waters. Heck, the guy is from Tabasco, does that say anything to us in itself?

AMLO’s used street demonstrations to good effect, as Evo Morales did before him, to in the end achieve his political will. Now, he’s going full blast with them as one of the few remaining tools he has left in the wake of an overwhelmingly free and fair election held in Mexico on July 2.

Many Mexicans are bracing for a long struggle over this. El Peje accepts nothing but victory, and it would not be out of character for him to prefer destroying the entire democratic electoral system before he accepts anything so ignoble (to him) as electoral defeat. That’s bad news for the majority of Mexico’s voters who had seen something in him they decided they didn’t like and didn’t vote for him.

Today he called together about 10,000 thousand of his supporters for another big demonstration in Mexico City. Some came from the hinterlands, places like Monterrey, but the bulk of them came from the areas around Mexico City, where his political base is.

AMLO’s rival, Felipe Calderon, called for calm ahead of the protest. Mexican markets fell 0.77%, actually less than U.S. markets did on this big selloff day in the stock market.

Looking at the pictures of the rally - see the slideshow here - I am a little skeptical that this is actually going to amount to anything. Look at how SMALL the crowds are, in all of them. Check out how sparse the crowd in this shot is below, in Calde"