Leftist demonstrators blocked access to foreign banks in Mexico on Wednesday to protest what they said was election fraud while judges and troops oversaw a partial recount that could decide July's presidential vote.

Supporters of leftist Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador surrounded main offices in Mexico City of US-based Citigroup's Mexican unit Banamex, Bancomer bank owned by Spain's BBVA and British giant HSBC, closing them for several hours.

Lopez Obrador, a fiery anti-poverty campaigner, narrowly lost the July 2 vote to ruling party conservative Felipe Calderon. He says many votes for him went untallied while others were stolen from ballot boxes, and is demanding a recount of all 41 million ballots cast.

Guarded by soldiers, election officials began a recount of votes from 9 percent of polling stations. The partial recount was ordered by the electoral court to clear up fraud charges.

Lopez Obrador's followers have crippled downtown Mexico City for the past 10 days by setting up tents on the main Reforma boulevard running through the business district.

On Wednesday, Lopez Obrador urged demonstrators to keep up their stand for a country-wide recount, and said his team would start delivering flyers to homes to make up for a national press biased against him.

"We do not accept the partial recount because our minimum, rational, fair demand is the recount of all the votes, polling station by polling station," he said.

Wednesday's protests had a nationalist tinge. Demonstrators draped a banner in Mexico's red, white and green colors across a Banamex office in the capital's Spanish colonial center.

All but one of Mexico's major banks are in the hands of foreign companies and the industry's sell-off has been a symbol of the free market reforms in Mexico disliked by the left.

"Banamex is really Citigroup, a foreign bank that ransacks the country," said Gerardo Fernandez, spokesman for the leftist Party of the Democratic Revolution, or PRD.

"It's them who are screwing the nation!" protesters chanted outside the HSBC building, a shiny new skyscraper on Reforma, as riot police stood guard and the Mexican Banks' Association threatened legal action against the organizers.

Judges, election officials and party representatives have until midnight Sunday to check some 4 million votes at 11,839 voting stations.

One recount in Mexico City was painfully slow, with PRD members asking court actuaries to note every detail of the proceedings. It took about an hour to tally a few hundred votes in front of a judge.

In the first few hours, officials detected serious irregularities in at least 15 of the 149 electoral districts being checked, said senior PRD figure Ricardo Monreal.

In the northern border city of Tijuana, journalists saw dozens of votes lying on the floor of a depot where ballots were supposed to have been locked inside sealed boxes.

About 50 out of 91 ballot boxes at the depot appeared to have been opened or tampered with, witnesses said.

Calderon's campaign insists the election was clean.

If the partial recount shows Lopez Obrador closing the gap on Calderon, it could force the electoral court to open more ballot boxes. If there is no big change in the numbers, Lopez Obrador will come under heavy pressure to give up his fight.

Many fear the power struggle could turn violent, posing the biggest challenge to Mexican democracy since President Vicente Fox won power in 2000 and ended seven decades of one-party rule infamous for corruption and fraudulent elections.

Despite fiery rhetoric and growing tension, Lopez Obrador vows his protests will remain peaceful.

(Chinadaily.com via agencies August 10, 2006)