Mexico’s presidential front runner on high alert for election fraud ahead of Sunday’s vote

The spectre of possible fraud rears its head in Mexico each electoral campaign, both in the popular imagination and among candidates on the ballot. This year has been no exception.

With leftist candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador holding a wide lead in most polls, his allies are warning even before Sunday’s presidential vote that there better not be any funny business.

“They shouldn’t dare commit a fraud, because if they do they will meet the devil,” Yeidckol Polevnsky, president of the candidate’s Morena party, said this week. “We will not accept it.”

This is Lopez Obrador’s third try for the nation’s top office, and he alleged fraud twice before after losses in 2006 and 2012. After his first race, which was decided by just 0.56 per cent and went to conservative Felipe Calderon, Lopez Obrador’s supporters mounted a protest camp that snarled traffic and hurt businesses for months along a 5km stretch of road in the heart of the capital.

This time around some supporters again fear that dirty tricks could be employed to keep him from office, even as authorities and outside observers say the possibility is remote.

“The chances of not winning exist because of the system that has in place for years,” said Antonio Lopez, a street vendor in Mexico City and Lopez Obrador supporter.