Following Salinas
Grayson, George W.
FOLLOWING SALINAS FROM PRESIDENTIALISM TO PLURALISM nless the Virgin of Guadalupe intervenes to prevent it, Mexico's new and more diverse Congress will declare Ernesto Zedillo Ponce de Leon,...
...GEORGE w. grayson George W. Grayson, author of North American Free Trade Agreement: Regional Community in a Global Order (University Press of America), teaches government at the College of William and Man...
...Some surveys even identified the bearded, colorful PANista—nicknamed "Jefe Diego" (Sir Diego) for his haughty, patrician manner—as the front-runner...
...After a twenty-something misfit pumped two bullets into Colosio's head on March 23, Salinas hand-picked Zedillo as the party's candidate...
...Observers have advanced various, unconfirmed reasons— illness, death threats, inadequate funds, personal quirkiness, a sense that the PAN was unprepared to govern—to explain his absence...
...Yet, several factors enabled the PRI candidate to win handily: • Zedillo's campaign slogans linked him with "well-being 5 REPORT FROM MEXICO for your family" and "a vote for peace," thereby sharpening fears that an opposition victory could ignite instability and violence...
...After all, the sixty-year-old engineer-turned-politician had run strongly—many Mexicans believe that he won—against Salinas in the 1988 contest that was suffused with fraud...
...Cardenas failed to establish a clear image: he championed a bigger role for government, but forswore higher taxes...
...The latter sparked growls from nationalists, who insisted that the text painted too favorable a picture of turn-of-the century dictator Porfirio Diaz, while embarrassing the military by describing its shooting of civilians in the October 1968 "Tlatelolco Massacre...
...He warned that ballot stuffing, multiple "carousel" voting, phony counts, and other criminal acts could discredit the regime, shatter the party' s grip on power, and eliminate their remaining perks...
...He lambasted the phlegmatic, unphotogenic Cardenas, whom he despises, as a self-promoting, do-nothing, and corrupt governor when he ran Michoacan state from 1980 to 1986...
...Zedillo will have to attack forbidding problems without some of the weapons boasted by Salinas, the last of Mexico's imperial presidents...
...After obtaining passage of the continental trade pact and selecting his successor, Mexico's tough, diminutive president suffered one kick in the teeth after another: a rebellion in Chiapas, the kidnapping of a prominent billionaire, and—worst of all—Colosio's assassination...
...What accounted for his thumping victory in a nation whose people yearn for political change...
...In the words of political analyst Luis Rubio, "Twenty percent of these firms will make it, 20 percent will go belly-up, and 60 percent can go either way...
...his mother as a low-level public servant...
...The relative cleanliness of the election will install Salinas in the Pantheon of Mexican notables and boost his candidacy for director-general of the newly created World Trade Organization...
...Even as Salinas ruled with a strong hand, members of the business community, women, community leaders, and priests no longer regard politics as the exclusive domain of the chief executive and a few hundred loyalists...
...This was a mordant commentary on the PRI's sixty-five years of authoritarian, Tammany Hall-style rule in a country whose government spent $ 1 billion this year to sanitize electoral procedures...
...He attracted an anemic crowd to the Zocalo central plaza on the Monday following the election...
...The banker-like technocrat took to campaigning like a teetotaler to tequila...
...An enormous fraud was committed," he told followers who brandished their party's black and yellow, sun-adorned banners...
...That action will confirm Zedillo's robust showing (48.8 percent) over Diego Fernandez de Cevallos (26 percent), nominee of the center-right National Action Party (PAN...
...Government-influenced TV networks devoted substantially more coverage to Zedillo, who improved his campaign style, than to his adversaries...
...Zedillo's December 1 inauguration promises to open a new chapter in his country's history—one in which pluralism begins to compete with presidentialism...
...Fernandez failed to build on his post-debate momentum and virtually left the campaign trail for a month in early summer...
...There he tied improved productivity to higher salaries for grossly underpaid teachers, decentralized the educational system to prevent nationwide strikes by the rambunctious SNTE teachers' union, and issued new textbooks...
...Minor irregularities aside, these contests garnered widespread praise thanks to an updated and expanded voter roll, see-through ballot boxes, and 82,563 domestic and foreign observers...
...He was, indeed, passed over in favor of Luis Donaldo Colosio, a confidant of Zedillo's who made the young education secretary his campaign manager...
...Newspapers from the left-wing Unomdsuno to the right-wing El Heraldo trumpeted the "responsibility" and "participation" of Mexico's electorate (some 77.7 percent went to the polls...
...But Fernandez, fifty-three, a quick-witted lawyer, came out punching...
...and six small-party hopefuls in the August 21 election...
...Salinas's condemnation of the offending books seemed to explode Zedillo's presidential prospects...
...Many expect Zedillo to include one or more PANistas in his cabinet...
...A former university rector and human-rights leader, Carpizo presided over the Federal Electoral Institute (IFE) that organized the recent balloting...
...As for the professional Zedillo, Fernandez sneered: "We know that you' ve been a good boy and got high grades, but in a democracy, we sincerely believe you fail...
...In that post, Zedillo privatized white elephant state firms, slashed subsidies, and helped pave the way for Mexico's integration with the U.S...
...Upon returning to Mexico, he rose swiftly through the financial bureaucracy until current president, Carlos Salinas de Gortari, named him secretary of planning and budget in 1988...
...and Canadian economies through the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA...
...Yet, the PRD's Cardenas continued the we-wuz-robbed bellyaching that he started months before the balloting took place...
...Among other actions, he replaced as government secretary a political hack and ex-Chiapas governor with the highly respected Jorge Carpizo McGregor...
...He appeared wooden and self-conscious in emphasizing his commitment to continuing Salinas's opening of a once-hugely statist and corrupt economy, as well as to the National Solidarity Program that funnels several billion dollars annually to grass-roots development initiatives...
...We don't know who won and who lost...
...Even as Salinas's star rose, Cardenas's fell...
...Until a May 12 debate, it appeared that Cardenas—once a PRI stalwart—would pose the toughest threat to Zedillo...
...Who is Zedillo...
...Alarmed by the possibility of a Fernandez triumph, even the PRI's old-guard "dinosaurs" jumped aboard their party's well-oiled and well-financed bandwagon...
...For starters, leftist individuals and organizations will be bereft of a viable legal outlet to vent frustrations also articulated by Subcomandante Marcos and his masked, gun-toting guerrillas in Chiapas...
...and he both criticized and praised private investors and NAFTA...
...he advocated decreased oil exports, but failed to give specifics...
...The Civic Alliance spawned a network of organizations that beamed a bright light on IFE activities, legitimated the deployment of domestic and foreign observers, and scrutinized the electoral process...
...The PRD leader's call for rallies, marches, and protests to void the election will not prosper...
...This will unleash centrifugal forces likely to shatter a party which, from its 1989 founding, more closely resembled a Mideast bazaar than a coherent political organization...
...Clearly, most Mexicans endorse the official outcome...
...Two acute problems flow from the PRD's probable disintegration...
...border...
...FOLLOWING SALINAS FROM PRESIDENTIALISM TO PLURALISM nless the Virgin of Guadalupe intervenes to prevent it, Mexico's new and more diverse Congress will declare Ernesto Zedillo Ponce de Leon, candidate of the governing Institutional Revolutionary Party (PR1), the country's next president...
...As Uder maxima, the incumbent jailed political opponents, ousted half the nation's thirty-one governors, steamrolled legislation through Congress, and personally picked two successors...
...Self-discipline and a steel-trap mind landed him one scholarship after another until he earned a Ph.D...
...More enthusiasts showed up six days later...
...And the print media, once a government PR service, now publicize official shenanigans—with papers such as El Norte, Reforma, and El Financiero in the vanguard...
...As a child, Zedillo shined shoes and collected cans to sell to local junk dealers...
...President Salinas moved Zedillo to head the education ministry in 1992...
...Cardenas's intransigence will, however, sharpen divisions between PRD extremists and moderates...
...Fernandez's nifty showing in the televised dust-up enabled him to streak ahead of the hapless Cardenas and pull within striking distance of Zedillo...
...His father worked as an electrician...
...The forty-two-year-old Zedillo grew up in a modest family in Mexicali...
...He was equally ill at ease when pledging to promote the true independence of judges and legislators, long manipulated by Mexican executives...
...The fact that the PRI lacks the two-thirds majority required in the 500-member Chamber of Deputies to amend the Constitution ensures that Zedillo will have to negotiate with legislative opponents to accomplish major policy changes...
...Above all, Zedillo must attract investment to generate employment for the 1 million young people who seek jobs each year...
...Who emerged as winners and losers from the August 21 balloting...
...It must also ensure technical assistance, vocational education, and affordable credit to small- and medium-sized entrepreneurs who are struggling to confront NAFTA-driven competition...
...On both occasions, PRD loyalists chanted "death to the PRI," evincing a troubling tendency to treat political adversaries more like enemies than worthy opponents...
...Salinas also laid down the law to the PRI's swagbellied dinosaurs...
...Salinas showed sangfroid in the face of these traumatic events...
...Cuauhtemoc Cardenas (16.6 percent), standard-bearer of the populist-left Democratic Revolutionary Party (PRD...
...What problems confront Mexico's next chief executive...
...The Zedillo administration will have to target spending on roads, irrigation, health, and education to keep millions of peasants from abandoning the land for the bright lights of Mexico City, other urban centers, and the U.S...
...in economics from Yale...
...Along with Zedillo, Salinas emerged as the big winner from the August election...
...Meanwhile, the increasingly centrist PRI and the technocratic Zedillo will lack a credible critic on the left of the party spectrum, especially at a time when the government must uplift the "other Mexico"—some 50 percent of the population—who endure harsh poverty...
Vol. 121 • September 1994 • No. 16
