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Chiapas voter fraud erupts on election eve

By ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published August 20, 2006

TUXTLA GUTIERREZ, Mexico - Mexican police said Saturday that they had broken up a vote-buying scheme in Chiapas on the eve of state elections, which will be closely watched in a country already straining under the turmoil of a disputed presidential election last month.

Four supporters of Mexico's leading leftist party were arrested Friday after authorities said they were caught trying to give away 36 tons of construction material to Hurricane Stan victims who promised to support the party's gubernatorial candidate.

The suspects were charged with violating electoral laws, said Jose Domingo Perez, spokesman for the state attorney general's office.

Aurora Guillen, a spokeswoman for the Democratic Revolution Party, or PRD, in Chiapas, said the party was aware of the arrests but was waiting for information from the prosecutor's office before making a statement.

Chiapas resident Rosendo Paniagua said he was asked to hand over his voter registration card and told to vote for Juan Sabines, the former mayor of Tuxtla Gutierrez, or he wouldn't receive a box of soup, milk, cooking oil and other basic food supplies from the city.

Paniagua said he and about 1,000 other senior citizens collected the foodstuffs after promising to vote for Sabines "or they wouldn't give us anything."

The suspects were detained in the town of Cacahoatan near the Pacific Coast, which is still recovering from the October hurricane.

Today's election in Chiapas - the country's poorest state, where Zapatista rebels briefly rose up against the government in 1994 - will be the latest test of Mexico's young democracy, which is already strained by the closest presidential vote in the country's history.

The outcome could further escalate the political crisis that has seized the capital and southern Oaxaca City since last month's disputed presidential election.

The PRD's presidential candidate, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, has called for around-the-clock protest camps to try to overturn the slight advantage of ruling party candidate Felipe Calderon in the July 2 presidential vote, citing fraud in the federal election.

The Federal Electoral Court has until Sept. 6 to announce a president-elect or annul the election.

In Mexico City, about 700 Lopez Obrador supporters marched Saturday to the Basilica of Guadalupe, one of the most sacred sites of the Roman Catholic Church in Mexico, to ask God to help their candidate triumph.

Earlier this week, Lopez Obrador took time away from weeks-old demonstrations in Mexico City to lend his star power to the narrow race in Chiapas.

On Wednesday, he told a crowd of thousands in the state capital, Tuxtla Gutierrez, that Sabines "will win by a wide margin, and will demonstrate that the next governor of Chiapas will be legal and legitimate."

Sabines is facing Jose Antonio Aguilar Bodegas, the candidate of the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI. Aguilar is also backed by President Vicente Fox's National Action Party, or PAN. Polls showed that the two lawyers were running about even.

[Last modified August 20, 2006, 00:35:04]