Mexican General Election 2006 Controversies - Election Observers

Election Observers

There were national and international election observers.

There was a mission of election observers from the European Union. From their June 15, 2006 press release:

"The EOM Core Team, in support of the Chief Observer, comprises 9 election experts and has been deployed to Mexico since early June. They will be shortly joined by 66 Long-Term Observers, who will be deployed throughout the country to observe the campaign period and pre-election preparations as well as Election Day and the post-election period."

El Universal reported that the mission was present in all the states of Mexico and the Federal District since June 22. After the election, José Ignacio Salafranca, chief of the EU delegation, said he considered the election clean and the decision of the Electoral Tribunal as fair.

Mark Almond, an election observer in several countries (but who did not participate as an observer in the Mexican election), questioned the objectivity of the mass media in general and Salafranca in particular, citing the latter's political affiliation with Spain's Partido Popular, considered to be ideologically close to the PAN. Almond writes:

"Salafranca has a track record as an election observer. In Lebanon's general elections in 2005 he had no problem with the pro-western faction sweeping the board around Beirut with fewer than a quarter of voters taking part and nine of its seats gained without even a token alternative candidate. 'It is a feast of democracy,' he declared. His mood changed when the democratic banquet moved to areas dominated by Hizbullah or the Christian maverick General Aoun. Suddenly, 'vote-buying' and the need for 'fundamental reform' popped up in the EU observation reports."

The Global Exchange group of 24 international observers claims it found electoral fraud or irregularities at all of the 60 polling places it observed, and called for a full recount. The Mexican election watchdog group Alianza Cívica (Civic Alliance) also claimed that many irregularities occurred.

Sophie McNeill, an Australian TV reporter for SBS Dateline Australia, reported:

So why is the majority of the press repeating that the presence of international observers ensured that the election was clean and fair? "It was the electoral tribunal itself that put out that press release about the observer's," Global Exchange President Ted Lewis told me. "We were really annoyed with them when they did that. And about two thirds of the other observers were diplomats who are not allowed to make public comments."

Sophie McNeill also reported in that article that there were 673 international election observers, and that they "only oversaw a fraction of the country's 130 thousand polling stations."