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

DATE: SUNDAY, August 21, 1994                   TAG: 9409270017
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: D2   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

ELECTION

MEXICANS are electing a president today. Who'll win is probably less important than whether the balloting will be generally accepted as having been fairly and honestly conducted.

And even if it is so accepted, which in Mexico is no certainty, it will be only a first step toward solving the nation's social and economic ills.

Actually, the identity of the winner may not be much of a mystery. By hook and by crook, the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) has stayed in power for 65 years. According to the polls, PRI candidate Ernesto Zedillo Ponce de Leon is running so far ahead that this year hook and crook won't be needed.

Quite the contrary. After the Zapatista New Year's Day uprising near the border with Guatemala, followed by the assassination at the other end of the country of PRI candidate Luis Donaldo Colosio (whom Zedillo replaced), what's needed is an election in which hook and crook play no part - and is generally perceived to have played no part.

Regardless of who wins - the PRI's Zedillo, Diego Fernandez Cevallos of the center-right National Action Party or Cuauhtemoc Cardenas of the left-wing Party of Democratic Revolution - he must tackle the extreme imbalance in Mexico's distribution of wealth, the weakness of its democratic institutions and the social polarization accompanying those problems.

Current President Carlos Salinas has performed ably in moving Mexico into place for a prosperous 21st century. Trade barriers have been lowered, inflation cut, the deficit eliminated, private investment boosted and infrastructure built. But giving those advances time to work their economic magic takes patience; in a country where the after-inflation standard of living has dropped nearly 50 percent in the past decade, patience understandably can be in short supply.

For Mexico's future, its next president must find ways to ameliorate poverty, and convince all Mexicans that they have a stake in the economic and social order.

And it is important for the United States as well. An unstable Mexico would worsen this country's immigration problems, and hinder the continued development of a major trade relationship productive for both partners.

by CNB