Mexican leftist asks for presidential recount

Lizbeth Diaz
MEXICO CITY | Tue Jul 3, 2012
Full Article
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/07/03/us-mexico-election-leftist-idUSBRE86216W20120703

The runner-up in Mexico's presidential election said on Tuesday he would ask election authorities to recount the votes from Sunday's contest, alleging it was riddled with fraud.

Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, who finished about 6.5 percentage points behind President-elect Enrique Pena Nieto of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), said the election had been corrupted by PRI vote-buying and other abuses.

Stirring up memories of the 2006 election, when he refused to accept defeat and unsettled financial markets by calling out his supporters to stage massive demonstrations in the capital for weeks, Lopez Obrador followed through on hints he dropped during the campaign that he might contest the result.

He said his campaign would ask the Federal Electoral Institute to recount the votes.

"We're going to ask them to clean up the election and make it transparent," the he told reporters in Mexico City. "For the good of the democracy and the good of the country, they need to count all the votes."

Financial markets were unmoved by his announcement on Tuesday.

Lopez Obrador, 58, has repeatedly accused the telegenic Pena Nieto of using illicit funding, breaching campaign spending limits and being supported by Mexico's mainstream media...