MEXICO CITY _ Finally, I found myself facing the man who was making headlines and had taken Mexico to the brink of an unprecedented electoral crisis.

Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, the candidate from the Democratic Revolution Party (PRD), refused to accept that he lost, in spite of official election results showing that the candidate from the National Action Party (PAN), Felipe Calderon, defeated him by a margin of 243,000 votes (or 0.58 percent of the total).

On the contrary, he would tell me in this interview that he was the president and that the election of July 2, 2006, was fraudulent from beginning to end.

Lopez Obrador arrived 10 minutes before the agreed time. Only his press chief accompanied him. I was expecting to meet an exhausted presidential candidate who was tense, nervous and irritable, with bags under his eyes.

"It has not been a day in the park," he told me.

However, I found Lopez Obrador relaxed and talkative, with a good sense of humor.

This was the third interview I had with him. I felt he was at peace with his decisions. The doubts I sensed in him on the two previous occasions had vanished. This time he spoke without beating about the bush.

My first goal was to understand how the fraud, that Lopez Obrador claims, was contrived.

"We can talk about two instances," he explained. The first was "the significance of the lack of equality before the election: the unfair allocation of radio and television time, the use of funds, the improper, illegal use of government institutions and programs to support the PAN candidate, the president's (Vicente Fox) interference, the dirty fight ... (and) the intervention of the Business Coordinating Council. The law expressly establishes that no civil organizations or civilians can participate with radio and television spots."

"If you see fraudulence in all this, how is it that you didn't withdraw (from the race)?" I asked him.

"Because I thought that, despite everything, we would defeat them," he answered, and then added that, "yes, in the end, we beat them."

The second part of the fraud, according to Lopez Obrador, came after the election. It wasn't cybernetic fraud, in his view, but "the old-fashioned kind."

"The fraud lies in the falsification of tally sheets," he asserted. "There is a specific number of tally sheets that were falsified, in which there are more votes recorded than voting sheets. It's proved... It's been officially documented. We have all the information."

The PRD became the second largest political force in Mexico following the 2006 election. PRD members will have a strong presence both in the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate.

So I asked him, "How is it that your party did so well but you lost the presidential election? Isn't there a contradiction here?"

"It isn't a contradiction," he replied. "Just imagine, I win in 16 states, including the three most populated _ the Federal District (Mexico City and its Metropolitan area) and the states of Mexico and Veracruz _ and lose the presidency. It's inexplicable."

"Who was behind the fraud?" I questioned.

"Fox, the PAN candidate (Calderon) and, yes, of course, the Federal Electoral Institute (IFE) and other protagonists."

When I told him that would imply hundreds, or maybe thousands, of Mexicans would have to have been coordinated in the effort to have him lose, Lopez Obrador responded, "you don't need a lot of people to be coordinated," that only a "close circle" of the highe echelon was enough to carry out the fraud. For the PRD candidate, Fox was a "traitor to democracy."

The question: how far was Lopez Obrador willing to go.

"The limit is nonviolence," he said. "Or, to put it another way, it is a peaceful movement."

During the interview, the PRD member recalled that in 1991, when Fox was a candidate for governor of the state of Guanajuato and lost because of fraud, he took over several highways and the airport in the city of Leon.

When I asked him whether he ruled out, for instance, taking over the airport in Mexico City if there was not a full vote recount, he only said he would do "everything to defend the vote, defend democracy."

Lopez Obrador was about to turn 53 years old and it was no secret that there could be younger and more attractive candidates in the PRD ranks for the 2012 presidential election, such as Cuauhtemoc Cardenas Batel, the current governor of the state of Michoacan, and the mayor-elect of Mexico City, Marcelo Ebrard.

"I could not do it (in 2012)," Lopez Obrador stated. "Because of my convictions, I am against re-election. I am already president."

To be frank, his comment took me by surprise, just as it did the score of people there watching the recording of this half-hour interview.

"Do you feel that you are the president?" I pressed him.

"I won the presidential election," exclaimed Lopez Obrador. "Yes, I am the president of Mexico. I am the president of Mexico by the will of the majority of Mexicans."

"That is a powerful statement to make," I said.

"Indeed, and a new vote recount is what I want," he added. "I won the presidential election."

Lopez Obrador estimated that the full recount of the 41 million votes in the July 2006 elections would take six days, and that such action was better than six years of political instability, suspicion and having an illegitimate president.

"What I am proposing (to Calderon) in order to dispel all doubts, and have no suspicions, but to have legitimacy, is to have a second vote count," he said. "He who owes nothing has nothing to fear. If (Calderon) says he won the election, why does he oppose a new vote count?"

Calderon had already responded, through a letter, that the vote recount did not depend "upon the opinions of the candidates, but on what the law establishes."

But what Lopez Obrador wanted from Calderon was for him to show personal willingness, not a legal authorization, to have all the votes recounted (just as was the case in the disputed Costa Rican presidential election, which Oscar Arias won by a 0.70 margin).

"Are you afraid someone will kill you?" I asked. "Do you worry that there are people who tried to prevent you from winning the presidency and now are saying, well, do we kill him if he keeps up this pressure?

"No," he replied, sharply. "I am afraid, as all humans are, but I am not a coward."

"Does it bother you that you could be accused of being a sore loser or an agitator?"

"No," he replied. "That doesn't affect me. Because I am at ease with my conscience, I am comfortable with myself, I have convictions, principles _ I am defending a just cause, so I don't worry about that. Besides, I do not have a weak stomach. I have been in this business for a while and know how to face adversity."

"And, according to you, you are the president of Mexico?" was my parting question.

"Yes," he answered, ending the interview. "In the vote recount I win the election. In the face of everything, in spite of the fraud, we won on July 2."