Salinas Dons Sash of Office Today : For Mexico’s New Leader, Power Will Have Limits

President-elect Carlos Salinas de Gortari, young and smart but politically weak and committed to an unpopular government program, today dons the Mexican presidential sash, the greatest symbol of power in Latin America.

In a country where symbols carry great weight, the red, white and green sash automatically will confer on Salinas a degree of legitimacy that he has lacked at home since his controversial election in July with the lowest vote ever for a candidate of the ruling party.

Salinas’ inauguration--with a military parade and eight Latin American presidents and Secretary of State George P. Shultz in attendence--ensures that the Institutional Revolutionary Party’s 60-year rule will continue for at least another six years.

But despite the great power of his office and the mammoth PRI, as his party is known, Salinas is not likely to govern Mexico’s 82 million citizens with the unquestioned and virtually unlimited authority of his predecessors.

“There has been a qualitative change in the questioning of Salinas, of the president,” Federico Reyes Heroles, a political scientist at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, said. “He has less of a mandate. . . . For the first time, there are social limits on the presidency.”

Salinas, 40, a Harvard-trained economist, maintains most of the formal advantages the PRI has always enjoyed: The party holds all but four of the 64 Senate seats, all 31 state governorships, a majority in all state legislatures, most mayorships and a majority in the national Chamber of Deputies.

Formally, all that Salinas lacks is the two-thirds majority in the Chamber of Deputies necessary to make the constitutional amendments that Mexican presidents frequently have made.

The difficulties that Salinas can be expected to encounter, however, are caused by other, less tangible elements of power. While known privately as witty and intelligent, Salinas has the public image here of an uncharismatic man, tough in negotiations against labor. Many Mexicans blame him for their poverty under outgoing President Miguel de la Madrid, who handpicked Salinas, his budget and planning secretary, to be his successor.

And Salinas must govern a changing society that increasingly rejects the PRI one-party system. He faces a suddenly strong and legitimate opposition that no Mexican president ever has had to contend with. The populist opposition, led by PRI defector Cuauhtemoc Cardenas, promises to question Salinas’ every move for the next six years while trying to build a party to counter the PRI. The opposition continues to insist that Salinas won the election through fraud.

Already, Salinas has agreed to an unprecedented dialogue with Cardenas’ National Democratic Front and the rightist National Action Party. The dialogue, which begins this week and is unlikely to produce quick results, demonstrates Salinas’ need to build consensus in politics.

Against this opposition, Salinas will have to work unusually hard to sell his policies to the public, and his new Cabinet announced Wednesday must demonstrate a capacity for political savvy.

“His success will depend on his capacity to make alliances in which he gets more than he gives,” said Manuel Villa, a political analyst at the postgraduate Colegio de Mexico. “It will be a government in permanent confrontation, and his capacity to negotiate will be crucial.”

Salinas may be the first Mexican president to make clear his economic and political program before taking office, and yet the contradictions in that program make him questioned even by the PRI.

For example, he proposes to reform the very party and electoral system that served to put him in office. But PRI interest groups read that as a threat to their power and are resistant to change. And, while PRI-controlled unions will obey Salinas’ austere economic programs, that obedience will cost those unions credibility among workers, weakening them and, therefore, the party.

Salinas says he will continue to hold down subsidies, open Mexico’s borders to foreign investment and imports, sell off state enterprises and streamline the federal bureaucracy, eliminating jobs along with paperwork. These measures, he believes, will lead to efficiency in Mexican industry and economic growth after years of stagnation.

His prospects are mixed, however. He is inheriting a $104-billion foreign debt that saps some 40% of Mexico’s annual export earnings, as well as oil prices that have plummeted. But at the same time, Mexico’s economy is more diverse, with a growth in non-petroleum exports, and capital is not nearly as skittish as during the 1982 transition, after President Jose Lopez Portillo decided on his own to nationalize the banks.

Salinas is betting that he can make his economic austerity program pay off in an increase in the standard of living for most Mexicans. A better economy, he believes, will regain prestige for the PRI and support at the polls.

But Salinas already predicts little growth in 1989. He is expected to hold down minimum wage increases to 10%, although citizens have lost 50% of their buying power in the last six years and some 14% to 20% of the work force is unemployed.

His frankness about the continued hardship translates to a paucity of public optimism.

“One of the aspects that gave vitality to the Mexican political system that is dying today was the six-year renovation of hope,” political analyst Lorenzo Meyer wrote recently in the Excelsior newspaper.

“Of course, reality never corresponded to that hope. . . . But the phenomenon was real, and it was very functional for maintaining stability,” Meyer continued. “In contrast, the system born today from the ashes of economic disaster lacks this old attraction. Today, probably most Mexicans harbor few illusions about the new presidency and the immediate future.”

In fact, lowered expectations could turn out to be a political plus for Salinas if he is able to deliver on the economy. Mexicans seemingly are fed up with false promises and would welcome some real relief. They could even reward it with votes in congressional elections three years from now that will serve as a referendum on Salinas and the PRI.

Indeed, the fact that Salinas must negotiate and conciliate may make his job more difficult, but ultimately may aid in the development of Mexican democracy. If handled well, a weakening of the traditional sectors of his party could help Salinas restructure the PRI to make it more democratic and more attractive.

“Many of those who are disillusioned with the PRI still believe in its principles,” said Reyes Heroles, the university political scientist. He said they might return to the party if it were seen as more honest and democratic.

Salinas’ own political savvy is pratically untested, because the presidency was the first elective office he ever sought. He has held appointed posts in the government since 1975. But he has earned a reputation in business and political circles as a hard worker, self-confident and committed to change.

“The traditional Mexican politician announces he is going to change everything and changes nothing,” Manuel Villa said. “Salinas is the opposite. He is always looking for change. In a system in crisis, this atttude can be very efficient.”