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`People power' is a U.S.-owned brand?

Mark Almond

The U.S. and the Western media back protests over controversial elections when it suits them, but are silent over those in Mexico.

A COUPLE of years ago television, radio, and print media in the West just could not get enough of "people power." In quick succession, from Georgia's rose revolution in November 2003, via Ukraine's orange revolution a year later, to the tulip revolution in Kyrgyzstan and the cedar revolution in Lebanon, 24-hour news channels kept us up to date with democracy on a roll.

Triggered by allegations of election fraud, the dominoes toppled. United States Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was happy with the trend: "They're doing it in many different corners of the world, places as varied as Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan and, on the other hand, Lebanon ... And so this is a hopeful time."

But when a million Mexicans try to jump on the people-power bandwagon, crying foul about the July 2 presidential elections, when protesters stage a vigil in the centre of the capital that continues to this day, they meet a deafening silence in the global media. Despite Mexico's long tradition of electoral fraud and polls suggesting that Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador — a critic of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) — was ahead, the media accepted the wafer-thin majority gained by the ruling party nominee, Harvard graduate Felipe Calderon.

Although Mexico's election authorities rejected Mr. Obrador's demand for all 42 million ballots to be recounted, the partial recount of nine per cent indicated numerous irregularities. But no echo of indignation has wafted to the streets of Mexico City from Western capitals.

Not a good news story

Apparently, crowds of protesters squatting in Mexico City for weeks protesting against alleged vote-rigging do not make a good news story. Occasionally commentators who celebrated Ukrainians blocking the main thoroughfares of the capital, Kiev, condescend to jeer at Mexico's sore losers and complain that businessmen are missing deadlines because dead-enders with nothing better to do are holding up the traffic.

The colour-coded revolutionaries of the former Soviet Union had a pro-Western agenda — such as bringing Georgia and Ukraine into the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation and the European Union — but in Latin America radicals question the wisdom of membership of U.S.-led bodies such as NAFTA and the WTO. The crude truth is that Washington cannot afford to let Mexico's vast oil reserves fall into hands of a President even half as radical as Venezuela's Hugo Chavez.

But did not the Western observers certify the Mexican polls as "fair," while they condemned the Ukrainian elections? True, but election observers are not objective scientists. The EU relies on politicians, not automatons, to evaluate polls. Take the head of its observer mission, the MEP Jose Ignacio Salafranca: as a Spanish speaker in Mexico, Mr. Salafranca had a huge advantage over many of the MEPs in Ukraine who draped themselves in orange even while en mission — but he is hardly neutral. His rightwing Popular party is an ally of Mr. Calderon's Pan party, which is in power in Mexico. Mr. Calderon was immediately congratulated by Salafranca's colleague Antonio Lopez-Isturiz on the "great news."

The days of left-wing fraternalism may be over, but the globalist Right has its own network, linking the Spanish conservatives, American Republicans, and Mr. Calderon's Pan party — and they provided the key observer. To paraphrase Stalin: "It doesn't matter who votes, it matters who observes the vote."

Mr. 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.

Unanimity on the scale seen across Lebanon suggests that the cedar revolution — despite the hype — did nothing to promote real democratic pluralism. Hizbollah's hold on the south is the most controversial aspect of the sectarian segmentation of Lebanese society, but everywhere local bosses dominate their fiefdoms as before.

Similarly, more scepticism about Ukraine's revolution would have left people better informed than the orange boosterism that passed for commentary 18 months ago.

But Mexico is different because it is so under-reported. The cruel reality is that "people power" has become a global brand. But like so many global brands it is owned by Americans. Mexicans and any other "populists" who try to copy it should beware that they are infringing a copyright.

No matter how many protesters swarm through Mexico City or how long they protest, it is George W. Bush and co who decide which people truly represent "The People." People power turns out to be about politics, not arithmetic. —

© Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006

(Mark Almond is a history lecturer at Oriel College, Oxford University.)

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