Whew! Calderon will be sworn in

Mexico’s Leftists took a page out of the post-election Democratic guidebook — protest, deny, accuse and whine — and ended with the same result: the candidate who was declared the victor will, in fact, win:

Mexico’s electoral court will name ruling party conservative Felipe Calderon president-elect on Tuesday, rejecting claims the fiercely disputed July 2 vote was unfair, sources said.

Losing left-wing candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has alleged widespread vote-rigging, but the seven electoral court judges tossed out his fraud claims last week and they are to deliver their final ruling on Tuesday.

Sources close to the court said on Monday the magistrates would declare the election process was clean, give a final vote count and confirm Calderon’s razor-thin victory.

“Everything appears to indicate the vote will be unanimous,” one of the sources told Reuters.

The election campaign and the fraud claims have split Mexico and posed a serious challenge to its young democracy just six years after President Vicente Fox’s historic victory ended seven decades of one-party rule.

Lopez Obrador, whose supporters have crippled central Mexico City with protests for the last month, says he will never recognize Calderon’s victory and will set up a parallel government to overhaul Mexico.

Now I have to admit — and here are my biases shining through loudly and clearly — that I would be less surprised to find widespread fraud in a Mexican election than in an American one. Nevertheless, given the terrorist security risk Mexico poses to America because of the porous border, and given Mexico’s abysmal economy, I can only say I’m pleased that, for whatever reason, a conservative won. One can only hope that the average Mexican’s probable yearning for normalcy and economic stability will have him or her treating Obrador’s “parallel government” with the contempt it deserves.