Mexico ups airport, oil security against protests

By Anahi Rama

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – Mexico ramped up security at its
international airport, power plants and oil refineries on
Friday, as leftists challenging a tight presidential election
result threatened to intensify crippling protests.

Supporters of leftist Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, who
claim his narrow defeat in the July 2 election was rigged,
warned they would step up civil disobedience unless the
country’s electoral court orders a full vote-by-vote recount.

“There is no other solution than a vote recount. Faced with
any other scenario we will expand our civil resistance
campaign,” Lopez Obrador spokesman Gerardo Fernandez said.

“We want to warn that we will not agree with a partial
recount nor with a sample.”

With the center of Mexico City already paralyzed by
protesters, the government took precautions against attempts to
block the city’s airport.

Dozens of police in riot gear patrolled the airport and
approach roads. Some briefly detained a Reuters photographer
who they thought was a leftist scouting out the area to
organize a protest.

Some 100 protesters on the Mexican side of the border
partially blocked a road bridge uniting the United States and
Mexico across the Rio Grande.

Extra safeguards were also put in place at power plants,
refineries and other oil industry facilities.

“Security has been stepped up,” government spokesman Ruben
Aguilar said. “Mexico City airport will always be in
operation.”

Ruling party conservative candidate Felipe Calderon, who
won the presidential race by 244,000 votes, says he won
cleanly, but he will accept a recount if there is one.

COURT DECISION

Lopez Obrador said on Thursday he would not let Calderon
take power unless the electoral court validates his win with a
recount.

The court, which holds a session on Saturday, would have to
start any full or partial recount well before an August 31
deadline to ensure time to carry it through.

Mexico City’s recently enlarged Benito Juarez airport is
one of the busiest in Latin America, with hundreds of daily
international and domestic flights that are crucial to the
country’s multibillion-dollar tourism industry.

The state-owned oil industry is another key economic
pillar, generating one-third of government revenues, and a
symbol of national sovereignty.

Lopez Obrador is from the oil-rich state of Tabasco and
staged marches there and blockades of oil wells to protest a
governor’s race he lost in 1994.

“Security has been reinforced, as a preventive measure, to
safeguard the operations of installations,” Energy Minister
Fernando Canales told reporters.

“We are convinced of the political players’ sense of
responsibility and of our experience of having the capacity to
isolate social-economic issues, like energy generation and
distribution, from national politics.”

Calderon’s team acknowledges the recount standoff is
creating a political rift that would be a challenge for
Calderon as president.

“It’s definitely a problem,” senior Calderon aide Juan
Camilo Mourino told Reuters on Thursday.

He said, however, that the protests could backfire. While
the leftist has rallied hundreds of thousands of people to back
his cause, many in the capital are sick of the chaos.

(Additional reporting by Adriana Barrera and Catherine
Bremer)