A day after Ramiro Hernandez of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) Monday received his official certification as the victor of the Guadalajara mayor’s race on July 1, his defeated opponent pledged to fight the result in the courts.
Meanwhile, Enrique Alfaro of the Citizen’s Movement, who lost the Jalisco gubernatorial race to the PRI’s Aristoteles Sandoval by less than five percent, is also refusing to accept defeat and will host an open-air meeting with his supporters in downtown Guadalajara Sunday to inform them of his next move.
A a press conference Tuesday, National Action Party (PAN) mayoral candidate Alberto Cardenas said irregularities had been identified in at least 500 of the 2,164 polling stations in the municipality, which accounts for just over one-third of the population of the Guadalajara metropolitan area. He said as many as 77 polling station officials duplicated the vote for the PRI/Green Party coalition, although only three instances can be confirmed on the Jalisco Electoral Institute (IEPC) website.IEPC’s final count gave Hernandez 38.6 per cent of the vote (322,155 votes) to Cardenas’ 33 percent (274,922 votes).
Citing other irregularities, Cardenas accused the PRI of vote buying “under the noses of everyone,” exceeding campaign spending limits and bribing evangelical religions in the city to ensure the votes of their followers.
“The PRI and their candidate played dirty and the arbitrators have not bothered to intercede,” said Cardenas, the first PAN governor of Jalisco from 1995 to 2001,
After a recount of some of the votes cast in the gubernatorial, state congressional and mayors’ races last week, the IEPC signed off on the results and declared its part in the election process finished. It has subsequently been handing out “constancias de mayoria” (official certification) to the victors,
Cardenas and his legal team – as well as Alfaro and other candidates contesting tight elections (including El Salto and Chapala) – will now present documented proof of all anomalies noted to the Jalisco Electoral Tribunal, who will have the final word on the validity of the results.
There’s no guarantee of success, though. Significantly, three of the five judges on the tribunal were recommended by legislators from the PRI.