OneWorld.net (U.S.)

SAN FRANCISCO, Aug 1 (OneWorld) - Supporters of left-leaning Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador have set up camps across Mexico City, demanding a recount of the country's disputed presidential election.

An estimated 500,000 protesters attended a rally supporting Lopez Obrador Sunday. Afterwards, Mexican police said their tents completely blocked a stretch of Paseo de la Reforma. Reforma provides access to the Mexican stock exchange, the U.S. embassy, Mexico headquarters of HSBC Holdings and the city's luxury hotel district.

The head of the Party of the Democratic Revolution, who promised to govern for the country's poor, is demanding a recount in the July 2 election, from which Felipe Calderon of the conservative ruling National Action Party (PAN) emerged with an advantage of less than 0.6 percent, or about 244,000 votes.

The election was so close that both sides declared victory, and Calderon has called on Lopez Obrador to concede.

But the left-leaning candidate has refused to bow to that pressure, and instead has demanded a full recount, predicting it will lead him to victory.

"I am the president of Mexico," he told Univision-TV Thursday. "I am the president of Mexico by the will of the majority."

Complicating matters, independent election monitors say with such a small margin between candidates the difference between the two candidates could be the amount of election fraud. The margin between the two leading candidates amounts to two votes per precinct spread across the country.

The San Francisco-based human rights group Global Exchange, which watched polling stations in the southern state of Oaxaca, found campaign literature for the third-place Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) inside polling stations along with members of the party brass. Global Exchange's election monitors also heard reports from multiple witnesses that some voters were paid 100 pesos (about $9) each to vote for the PRI.

Elsewhere, exit poll workers in Tamuin informed observers they overheard a PAN representative discuss with voters the payment of 500 pesos ($45) in exchange for support for PAN candidates. According to Global Exchange, the PAN representative in question was identified but no one was interested in sharing any other information. "His situation is not unlike Al Gore's in 2000," the group's Ted Lewis said of Lopez Obrador.

Lewis, who has monitored 10 elections in Mexico, said Lopez Obrador carries the memory of predecessor Cuauhtemoc Cardenas, who most observers believe deserved to become Mexico's president in 1988 when that year's election was controversially--and many believe illegally--won by the PRI's Carlos Salinas.

The PRI ruled Mexico for more than 70 years before being ousted by voters six years ago.

"The problem here is because the election is so close and because of some mistakes by the electoral commission, a great deal of suspicion has been cast over the result," Lewis told OneWorld.

Despite the fraud, however, Lewis believes a recount could help give credibility to whichever candidate ends up on top.

"Lopez Obrador is on the record that there won't be mobilizations if there's a recount," he said. "It may not be possible to have unanimity in the election result but it will be impossible if there's no recount." Mexico's electoral tribunal has until August 31 to certify the election or order a recount, though it is may not make its decision public until September 6.