More than a week after the election that split the country, the word ?fraud? has become an integral part of a bitter national debate. The challenger, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, is raising sharp questions about the outcome of the vote, and if he doesn?t get answers, it is increasingly clear he will make it hard for Calderón to govern.

In a country where deep doubts about the cleanliness of the electoral process have resurfaced, both sides must dispel them. López Obrador has every right to legally question the results of a close election, just as the country has every right to demand that he respect its results. A vote-by-vote recount would offer him no recourse but to do so.

Mexico needs to review the votes in order to move beyond the paranoid style of its current politics ? especially now that López Obrador seems intent on destroying the country with the hope of governing it someday. Instead of keeping a cool head, he is butting it against everything he can: President Vicente Fox, the Federal Electoral Institute, the media, international observers and all those who believe that although irregularities might have occurred, massive fraud did not.

Once again he has resorted to the ?all or nothing? approach that has become his trademark. He is confronting his opponents, encouraging conflict; he wants the presidency or else he vows to unleash civil unrest.

Paradoxically, the only way to rein him in would be precisely through the recount he has been pushing for. The best mechanism to neutralize López Obrador and his followers would be to give in to their demands. To call their bluff. To smoke them out. To push the Federal Electoral Tribunal to order a recount, as it is legally allowed to do. To insist that López Obrador accept whatever the electoral authority decides.

Total transparency might be the only way to deal with López Obrador?s aggressive political posturing and the social discontent it has fueled. This may be the last chance Mexico has to force him to play by the rules instead of challenging them at every turn.

The partial or total review of votes cast shouldn?t be viewed as a concession to López Obrador but as a way of taming him. The objective of a recount shouldn?t be to question the majority?s will but to clarify its intent. As the opening of 67 electoral packages in District 29 of Mexico City during the official count revealed, human error does happen. In 62 out of the 67 that were opened (out of a total of 450 packages), the tallies on the outside didn?t match the votes inside. It would take only one mistake in every 400 votes for the official results of the election to change. They could still do so, or perhaps not, but both people who worship López Obrador and those who loathe him need to know for sure. Otherwise, uncertainty will prevail, and Mexico?s warring factions will take advantage of it.

Yet many members of the political and economic establishment don?t understand this.

They believe that by presenting this election as a done deal, they stand on principle and weaken López Obrador, who they believe is no more than a demagogue. But, in fact, they are empowering him. Their resistance to a recount is feeding the growing perception that massive fraud may have taken place, even though it probably didn?t. People are marching and mobilizing because the country?s elites keep providing them reasons to do so.

When Fox says those who voted for López Obrador are ?renegades,? he creates more of them. When Calderón starts speaking about his future Cabinet and acting as if he won, he angers those who question if he really did. Soon they will be pouring into the streets of Mexico City, ready to prove that López Obrador wasn?t dangerous until his enemies forced him to act that way.

In order to move beyond this tense stalemate, Calderón would have to accept some form of recount, and López Obrador would have to promise to unequivocally abide by its results.

The electoral tribunal has until Sept. 6 to give a final verdict and declare a president-elect. As an institution created to deal with post-electoral conflicts, the tribunal must show that it can use a vote-by-vote recount to defuse them. Only then will winners and losers be able to put Mexico back together again, instead of threatening to tear it apart.

Denise Dresser is a newspaper columnist and a professor at the Autonomous Technological Institute of Mexico.