For Mexico’s left, an awkward reprise

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During Mexico’s presidential election two years ago, Andrés Manuel López Obrador and his left-leaning Democratic Revolution Party loudly protested a vote count that produced a paper-thin margin in favor of his conservative rival, Felipe Calderón.

López Obrador’s party, Mexico’s main opposition, is embroiled in a new vote-counting controversy, this time over results of its own election Sunday to choose new leaders. And some member complaints sound remarkably similar to those the party lodged in defeat in 2006.

The party, known in Spanish as the PRD, planned to release official results today, but now says it may take until Sunday to declare a winner in the hard-fought race between López Obrador’s close ally and former deputy, Alejandro Encinas, and Jesús Ortega, a former senator.

Encinas claimed victory hours after the polls closed. Two polling firms hired by the party showed him up by at least 4 percentage points, based on their samples of the vote. The Mexican press declared him the winner.

But Ortega wants a full count before conceding, arguing that preliminary results of the official tabulation put him ahead. His camp is challenging the validity of the pollsters’ findings and demanding that the winner be determined “vote by vote” — the party’s mantra in its vain bid for a recount in 2006.

-- Ken Ellingwood in Mexico City