Mexico Will Recount Votes With Calderon Leading

Sounds ominous.

"``We're in the realm of scrutinizing individual ballots, just like in the U.S. in 2000,''"

July 3 (Bloomberg) -- Mexican election authorities will conduct a recount to determine who won yesterday's presidential vote, with nearly complete returns showing former Energy Minister Felipe Calderon in front by the slimmest of margins.

Calderon, of President Vicente Fox's National Action Party, had 36.36 percent of the vote, followed by former Mexico City Mayor Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador with 35.39 percent, based on 97.6 percent of ballots counted. Both candidates, separated by 371,786 votes, declared victory. A recount will start July 5, and authorities plan to say that night how long it may last. The electoral court has until Aug. 31 to decide any challenges.

``We're in the realm of scrutinizing individual ballots, just like in the U.S. in 2000,'' said Chappel Lawson, a professor of political science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in an interview from Mexico City. ``It's looking bad for Lopez Obrador, but I don't think we can say it's over.''

Mexico's peso, bonds and stocks rose on expectations Calderon, 43, will triumph and maintain Fox's pro-business policies of the last six years that brought down inflation, erased a budget deficit and promoted free trade.

The election, the first since Fox won in 2000 and ended 71 years of rule by the Institutional Revolutionary Party, is a test of the Latin American nation's fledgling democracy.

Lopez Obrador, 52, a member of the Party of the Democratic Revolution, told cheering supporters last night he would respect the final results announced by the electoral institute. At the same time, he said the authorities must respect his victory.

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[link to www.bloomberg.com]

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