Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, September 14, 1994 TAG: 9409140041
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-11 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By GEORGE W. GRAYSON
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Outgoing chief executive Carlos Salinas de Gortari deserves recognition as hero No. 1. After winning passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement and picking as his successor the attractive Donaldo Luis Colosio last November, Mexico's tough, diminutive jefe maximo suffered one setback after another. A guerrilla movement erupted in Chiapas, kidnappers seized one of the country's 24 billionaires, and - worst of all - a twentysomething misfit pumped two bullets into Colosio's head.
Although initially shaken, Salinas showed sangfroid in the face of these traumatic events. Among other actions, he replaced as government secretary a political hack and ex-Chiapas governor with the highly respected Jorge Carpizo McGregor. A former university rector and human-rights leader, Carpizo presided over the Federal Election Institute (IFE) that organized the recent balloting.
Minor irregularities aside, these elections sparked widespread praise thanks to an updated and expanded voter registry, transparent ballot boxes and 71,000 foreign and domestic observers. The contests attracted a 75 percent turnout, in part because of citizen confidence in their validity, in part because of PRI-led partisan get-out-the-vote efforts, and in part because people - especially poor folks who will never have a credit card - were eager to use their shiny new, bar-coded, photo-adorned voter ID cards.
Salinas also laid down the law to the PRI's swag-bellied old guard, who - just last November - practiced blatant hanky-panky on behalf of their party's candidates in Yucatan state elections. The word went out from Los Pinos presidential palace that stuffed ballot boxes, multiple voting, phony counts and other criminal acts could discredit the regime, shatter the PRI's grip on power and eliminate the remaining perks enjoyed by the so-called "dinosaurs" who roam the party's union and peasant sectors.
Above all, Salinas had the sense to handpick Ernesto Zedillo as Colosio's successor. Though bright as a pin, the 42-year-old Ph.D. had little political experience and raised the hackles of PRI apparatchiks. They craved a practicing politician who appreciated the importance of booty and patronage in lubricating a political machine. Salinas spiked a mini-revolt in his own party to select the Yale-trained economist because:
nZedillo eschewed, in the words PRI stalwart Miguel Angel Gurria, "wishy-washy stances" to show decisiveness as secretary of both Budget and Planning (1988-92) and Education (1992-93).
nHe backed fully the Salinas-inspired economic opening, while recognizing the need for beefed-up investment in roads, irrigation, health and education;
nHe was free of the commitments to interest groups that even the reformist and appealing Colosio had contracted.
nHis candidacy would calm the fears of investors, who pulled millions of dollars out of Mexico in the wake of Colosio's March 23 assassination.
Of course, Zedillo's candidacy benefited from a bottomless war-chest of pesos, vastly preferential access to government-influenced TV networks, and the fact that the PRI - unlike the PAN and PAD - boasts a nationwide mobilization capacity.
Almost as deserving as Salinas of a hero's medal is Diego Fernandez de Civiles, the PAN's bearded presidential nominee who is also known as Jefe Diego (Sir Diego) because of a patrician haughtiness.
In a confrontational style generally spurned by Mexican politicos, the feisty Fernandez wiped the floor with both Zedillo and PRD standard-bearer Cuauhtemoc Cardenas in a mid-May debate. Although he failed to take advantage of his victory in the televised dust-up (possibly for health reasons), his impressive performance alerted Zedillo that he would have to sharpen his public presentations to win decisively.
Despite a month off the campaign trail, Jefe Diego sprinted to the finish line - with support focused in the North, central states and urban areas. As a result, the PAN boosted its vote from 1988 (16.7 percent) to 1994 (26.7 percent).
While Fernandez finished a distant second, his robust presence helped elect scores of PANistas to the legislature. It appears that many Mexicans split their vote, casting one ballot for Zedillo and a second for a PAN or PRD congressional candidate. A sizeable opposition in Congress will force the new chief executive and his legislative lieutenants to negotiate, bargain and compromise, rather than rely on sheer numbers to steamroll bills and constitutional amendments.
Fernandez's responsibility in recognizing the relative cleanliness of the election brightened his image and that of his party. The result is that Zedillo will invite one or more PAN militants to join his cabinet. For his part, Jefe Diego has announced plans to retire from the "light" and "luster" of politics.
The third hero is Sergio Aguayo, a bespectacled university professor and human-rights champion who heads the Civic Alliance. Aguayo perceived that citizens - those with few, if any, ties to traditional political groupings - had to play a greater role in politics if Mexico was to move away from authoritarianism via pluralism toward democracy.
Through the Civic Alliance, he spawned a network of organizations that (1) beamed a bright light on IFE activities, (2) legitimated the deployment of domestic and foreign observers, and (3) scrutinized the electoral process. While critical of official missteps at the polls, Aguayo and his cohorts dissuaded many backroom pols from indulging in the coercion and vote-stealing that prompted the aphorism: "Mexico enjoys democracy 364 days a year - it's only missing on election day."
Even as newspapers from the left-wing Unomasuno to the right-wing El Heraldo cheered the "responsibility" and "participation" of Mexican voters, the PRD's Cardenas continued the we-wuz-robbed bellyaching that he started months before the balloting took place. "An enormous fraud was committed," he told followers. "We don't know who won and who lost."
PRD loyalists chanted "death to the PRI," evincing a tendency to treat political adversaries like enemies rather than worthy opponents.
For starters, Cardenas complained that insufficient ballots at "special precincts" deprived hundreds of thousands of away-from-home citizens of their vote. This was a glaring defect in the process. Yet, the PRD paladin failed to mention his party's having proposed the very IFE regulation that limited these voting places to just 300 ballots each.
Cardenas' call for rallies, marches and protests to void the election will not prosper. Clearly, most elites, a huge majority of domestic and foreign observers, all major public-opinion polls and a preponderance of average citizens uphold the official count. Even the skittish Mexican stock exchange climbed 1.9 percent the day after the election.
While Cardenas did capture at least 30.9 percent in the fraud-tainted 1988 presidential contest, his percentage on Aug. 21 (17.1) falls just above the left's traditional slice of the electoral pie.
His intransigence will sharpen divisions between PRD extremists and moderates, impelling centrifugal forces that are likely to shatter a party that, from its beginning, resembled more a Mideast bazaar than a coherent political organization.
Two acute problems would flow from the PRD's probable disintegration. To begin with, leftist individuals and organizations will lack a viable legal outlet to vent frustrations also articulated by gun-toting guerrillas in southern Chiapas state. Meanwhile, the increasingly centrist PRI and the technocratic Zedillo will lack a credible critic on the left of the party spectrum at a time when the government must uplift the half of the population who live in harsh poverty.
For the moment, however, the cheers of deservedly proud Mexicans for their heroes are drowning out Cardenas' long-anticipated public bleating.
George Grayson, who teaches Government at the College of William & Mary, has just written "The North American Free Trade Agreement: Regional Community and the New World Order," to be published in October.
by CNB