Strings and % sign fails - Help Please

[siasookhteh at gmail.com]

I also posted this in Django Users group, but figured it probably has
more relevance for python group.

It seems like a freak problem to me.  I spent a long hour to track the
problem down and here it is:

The following statement fails because it has the '%' sign in it.
cursor.execute("select '%'")

The error is: IndexError: list index out of range

How do I address this problem?

Please note that the following work just fine:
cursor.execute("select 'x'")

and the following also fails with the same error:
cursor.execute("""select '%'""")
cursor.execute("select '\%'")

astr = "select '\%'"
cursor.execute(astr)

I greatly appreciate all helps,
Regards,
Sia