MEXICO CITY — Felipe Calderon grew up as a play-by-the-rules, straight-A student who loved soccer and learned to shake hands and go home when the whistle blew.
His opponent in the presidential campaign loved baseball and settled disputes on a dirt field with fists-flying brawls.
Now with the 2006 election declared over, a defeated Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador is charging off the mound and threatening to draw all of Mexico into the fight.
Using incendiary speeches and force of personality, Lopez Obrador has persuaded more than one-third of the country that Mexico's July 2 presidential contest was manipulated so that Calderon would win.
Lopez Obrador's critics say that along the way, he has inflicted severe damage on Mexico's still-fragile democratic institutions, including the Federal Electoral Tribunal that Tuesday declared Calderon the winner.
To Lopez Obrador, that seems to matter little.
"To hell with the institutions!" he declared in a lateafternoon speech, echoing his new favorite line and vowing to continue what he portrays as his fight for Mexico's poor.
Since the election, Lopez Obrador has rallied supporters to demand a recount of the election, bringing them out into the streets to pitch their protest camp in Mexico City's central square and along its main boulevard. President Vicente Fox and much of Mexico have stood by waiting for the protest movement and its tent city to fold under the weight of summer rains and the scorn of citizens angry over traffic jams and lost business.
But Lopez Obrador sees the declaration of his defeat as one in a long line of corrupt acts by Mexico's elite, aides say. His political history provides little indication that he will back away from the confrontation.
In 1994, Lopez Obrador lost the governor's race in his native state of Tabasco. The protests he staged then lasted more than a year. He dropped the campaign only when he took over as president of the Democratic Revolution Party, or PRD, in 1996.
There appears to be no similar exit this time.
Fox has three months before Calderon is scheduled to take office and, in theory, could use that time to find a graceful solution. But Calderon's advisors and outside analysts agree that Fox has been passive during the summer and has so far shown no sign of taking a more active role.
