MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Mexican riot police used tear gas and clubs to drive back leftist legislators and supporters protesting outside Congress on Monday in the first violent clash over a fiercely contested presidential election. Several lawmakers from the left-wing party whose presidential candidate narrowly lost the July 2 election were slightly injured when police swept through their protest camp.
Demonstrators threw rocks back at the federal police lines. It was the first time the government has deployed police to break up protests that began days after the election and have until now been peaceful.
"They hit us all, they fired gas at us. I still haven't recovered from the tear gas," Elias Moreno, a senator of the Party of the Democratic Revolution, or PRD.
Supporters of Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, who claims the election was stolen by his conservative rival Felipe Calderon, have turned the center of Mexico City into a sea of tents and extended their protests to Congress on Monday.
Dozens of protesters put up tents on one side of the imposing concrete building. They are trying to surround Congress to stop President Vicente Fox from delivering his annual state of the nation speech there on September 1.
Calderon, the candidate of Fox's conservative National Action Party, said on Monday a partial vote recount carried out last week has confirmed his victory and he is confident Mexico's top electoral court will now declare him president-elect.
Breaking several days of silence in the bitter fight over the July 2 election result, Calderon said no serious irregularities had been found in the 9 percent of ballot boxes included in the recount, which ended on Sunday.
"Not one significant anomaly was found," Calderon said. "On the contrary, it ratifies ... that we won the elections."
