
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SATURDAY, March 26, 1994                   TAG: 9403310004
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A9   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

STABILITY AND SUCCESSION

AN ASSASSINATION in Mexico is different from an assassination in the United States, because Mexico's political institutions are more fragile. This is so in spite of, and because of, the Institutional Revolutionary Party's, or PRI's, success in winning every Mexican presidential election since 1929.

Luis Donaldo Colosio, assassinated Wednesday in Tijuana, had been handpicked by outgoing President Carlos Salinas de Gortari to succeed him. He was by most accounts an effective and sincere leader, a democrat whose death is a serious blow to his country. A period of uncertainty seems certain to follow.

But, in all likelihood, Mexico's progress toward democracy will continue. This is so, in part, because of political reforms Salinas has been pushing, which one day should reduce certainty in presidential succession, or at least PRI-style certainty.

This is so, too, because political progress is firmly connected to Mexico's increasing economic integration in North America - also pushed, to his lasting credit, by Salinas.

The North American Free Trade Agreement offers avenues for growing prosperity in Mexico, but the gains can't be grasped without stability, and this requires an opening up and cleansing of that nation's stultified, corrupt political institutions.

Single-party government, corrupt patronage, machine politics and electoral fraud can carry a government only so far these days. (Look at what happened in Chicago.) Now Mexico is trembling under the twin eruptions of an Indian peasant uprising this winter and the shocking murder this week of the presumed next president.

All of which underscores the value of electoral reforms proposed by Salinas, including election monitoring and independent audits of voter rolls.

Of course, these reforms alone won't assure a transition to multiparty democracy. Much more is needed.

Colosio was the former head of Mexico's social and rural development programs. He may have been chosen as the PRI candidate in part because Salinas recognized another condition for continued progress: serious efforts to reduce inequalities of wealth.

Economic modernization offers a far better foundation for such efforts than does the failed socialism and xenophobia of the past. And it is imperative that the United States stand shoulder to shoulder with its good neighbor to help Mexico through this crisis. President Clinton's discussion Thursday of a $6 billion line of credit to help stabilize the peso was, in this regard, a reassuring intervention.

Even so, Mexico on its own still must come to terms with its leadership-succession problem. The need for fair elections was evident before Colosio's assassination, and remains just as evident today.

by CNB