Mexico Opposition Stalls Ratification of Salinas : Hoots, Heart Attack Mark Chamber’s Rowdy Start on Confirmation Process

Mexico’s political crisis deepened Friday as angry opposition legislators delayed the ruling party’s efforts to ratify the election of Carlos Salinas de Gortari as president.

A shoving match on the rostrum, deafening catcalls and arching paper airplanes marked the beginning Thursday of the Chamber of Deputies’ canvass of the July 6 elections, which the opposition has branded as fraudulent. The commotion, ignited by a blind and elderly deputy’s demand that he be permitted to speak, eventually caused one congressman to topple over in his seat with a heart attack.

Throughout the night Thursday and into the early hours of Friday, deputies and observers expressed concern that the hooting and whistling would erupt into violence, and chamber President Miguel Montes Garcia called frequent recesses in a futile attempt to maintain order. Late Friday, the chamber resumed the debate again.

Opposition Virulence

The Institutional Revolutionary Party’s majority in Congress is expected to certify Salinas’ election as president, but the virulence of the opposition makes it difficult to imagine how he will be able to appear before Congress on Dec. 1 to be sworn in.

Independent political analysts say they believe Salinas won the election with a plurality of the votes cast but not the majority and broad margin claimed by the government. Officials earlier had been saying that Salinas won with 50.36% of the vote, but on Friday, two months after the election, they suddenly raised the official figure to 50.74%

The rightist National Action Party, which says the elections were too crooked to determine who won, has called for new elections. At the same time, the leftist National Democratic Front coalition insists that its candidate, Cuauhtemoc Cardenas, won the presidential race.

The hotly contested presidential and congressional elections resulted in the most divided Chamber of Deputies in Mexican history, with 260 seats for the PRI and 240 for the opposition. Since the election, one member of the PRI has defected to the Democratic Front and three members of the front have crossed over to the ruling party.

Speech Disrupted

And the pitch of opposition protests has escalated since the deputies made history last week by disrupting President Miguel de la Madrid’s annual “state of the nation” speech. Before that, direct confrontation with the president had been virtually unthinkable.

After the speech, hard-liners within the PRI reportedly put their foot down on negotiations with the opposition. The party announced early this week that it planned to ratify Salinas quickly, without the recount the opposition had urged.

Salinas, who has rarely appeared in public since the election, has said he wants to modernize and reform his party, which has ruled Mexico for nearly 60 years. But now, observers say, Salinas is too politically weak to confront the interest groups and old-time politicians who control the party.

“Salinas and company realize they need a united PRI because they face an aggressive opposition--a situation no Mexican president has ever had to face,” said one Western diplomat, asking not to be identified by name. “Salinas has talked about democracy, but it is going to be damn difficult now.”

Commission Walkout

On Thursday, the opposition walked out of a meeting where a committee was trying to write a finding on the election, charging that the PRI deputies had arrived with a 68-page finding already printed.

The PRI document declares the elections were “valid and legitimate,” with full opposition access to the news media during the campaign and ample opportunity to observe and challenge the voting. It declares Salinas the winner.

During Thursday night’s committee session, the opposition left the meeting before the roll had been called in an attempt to prevent a quorum. They failed, however, and returned to complain that they had not been given copies of the PRI document in advance, as required by law.

“How can we give you a copy if you aren’t here?” one PRI deputy shouted.

Stamping of Feet

As the PRI began to read its draft, the blind deputy, Francisco Ortiz of the National Democratic Front, began stamping his feet and demanding that his party be allowed to speak. Denied the floor, he shouted that the finding had been written in the Interior Ministry, which oversees elections and state security. He charged that the PRI had not based its finding on any evidence.

“It violates the sovereignty of this congress,” Ortiz screamed.

At this point, Montes ordered a recess.

When the secretary resumed his reading of the PRI finding, opposition deputies crowded onto the rostrum in an effort to overwhelm him, but PRI deputies then piled in and shoved the opposition away. The PRI backers held the rostrum for the rest of the evening, enabling the secretary to finish reading the finding, as required by law--but his words were scarcely audible over the din of whistles, slamming of desk tops and shouts of “Fraud!”

The PRI deputies chanted in reply: “Leave, leave, leave!”

National Action Party deputies waved ballots, marked for the PRI, with which they said the government had stuffed ballot boxes. The PRI accused them of stealing the ballots and threatened formal charges.

5-Minute Recess

After midnight, Alejandro Martinez, a Democratic Front deputy, fell over at his desk with what was called a heart attack. A five-minute recess was ordered, so that his colleagues could carry him out, and then the battle resumed. Martinez was taken to a hospital.

Opposition deputies then began to throw paper airplanes and wadded-up ballots at the PRI deputies on the rostrum. They made confetti of copies of the constitution and the electoral code.

PRI deputy Jose Luis Lamadrid, a former ambassador to war-torn Nicaragua, observed that “things were a lot easier in Managua.”

And Rene Trevino, a fellow PRI deputy from Tijuana, groused, “You give them a hand and they want the arm.”

At 2:30 a.m. Friday, secretary Victor Hugo Zelaya read the article decreeing Salinas president and a new uproar erupted, with one side shouting, “Sa-li-nas, Sa-li-nas!” and the other shouting, “Fraud, electoral fraud!”

Montes declared a recess until late Friday, when he initiated a debate agreed to in early morning negotiations. And Ortiz said: “We told them the only way to avoid a repeat of last night was to allow a full debate--that it was up to them.” The session again was expected to last into the early morning today.

But opposition deputies conceded that although they were delaying, they could not prevent Salinas’ ratification. In the end, they said, they would have to negotiate a peaceful coexistence.