The LA Times reports that during the first session of Mexico’s new congress September 1, 2006, 150 opposition legislators protesting election fraud against PRD presidential candidate, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, seized the podium and stopped President Vicente Fox from making his state-of-the-nation address.

It was the first time in Mexican history that a president didn’t give an annual address to Congress. Protesting legislators from the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) held signs that read ‘Fox, you are a traitor to democracy, the indigenous people abhor you!’ Others held up posters showing Lopez Obrador (aka: AMLO) or national hero Benito Juarez, Mexico’s two term Zapotec president from the 1800s. Some simply held small Mexican flags.

The LA Times also reported that “thousands of demonstrators led by Lopez Obrador gathered at the capital’s central square, known as the Zocalo. ‘A revolution has begun in which the people say to hell with their institutions,’ Lopez Obrador told a cheering crowd. ‘They can’t legitimize or legalize a government of usurpers, because they stole the election and the majority of the people know that.’

Lopez Obrador has called on supporters to form a parallel government during a ‘national convention’ Sept. 16, the day when Mexican independence is celebrated.” Read more about the historic blockade of the Mexican Congress and the electoral crisis, at the Houston Chronicle and the San Jose Mercury News. Given that many people in the United States think Bush stole the elections, one can only imagine what would happen in the U.S. if Democrats acted like an opposition party akin to the PRD.