Mexico Turns a Page : New President Will Find Change Elusive, Troubling

Carlos Salinas de Gortari’s inaugural process can be most accurately defined by the links between its three elements: the appointment of the new cabinet, the opposition’s reaction and his inaugural address. In themselves the three chapters, while including a few surprises, were hardly spectacular. Perhaps the most revealing one was the Freudian slip by the president of the Congress, who referred to Salinas, as she gave him the floor, as “the president of the united states in word,” instead of “the united states of Mexico.”

Salinas’ cabinet indicates continuity in economic and wage policy: The secretary of labor, Arsenio Farell Cubillas, keeps his job; an apparent hard-liner on domestic matters, the new minister of the interior, Fernando Gutierrez Barrios, spent most of his political career in the security apparatus. The cabinet also includes several members of the PRI (Institutional Revolutionary Party) old guard--notably the new tourism secretary, Carlos Hank Gonzalez, former mayor of Mexico City and one of the country’s most old-style though skillful politicians. Among other so-called dinosaurs named to the cabinet or cabinet-level posts are former PRI chairman Jorge de la Vega Dominguez as secretary of agriculture, former PRI chairman Javier Garcia Paniagua as Mexico City police chief, and former minister of the interior Manuel Bartlett as secretary of education.

The opposition’s speeches, carried on nationwide television just before the inauguration ceremony, reaffirmed its belief that Salinas is an illegitimate president who reached the office only thanks to electoral tampering. Both the right-of-center PAN (National Action Party) and the left-of-center National Democratic Front restated their rejection of Salinas’ legitimacy and their conviction that a major democratic reform of the political system is a necessary condition for any modernization of the country’s economy or society. The Cardenista opposition marched out of the Chamber of Deputies as Salinas was about to be introduced, and the PAN opposition waved banners and shouted anti-government slogans as the former president, Miguel de la Madrid, handed the presidential sash over to his successor.

The new president’s speech was true to expectations: subdued, well-written and intelligent, but devoid of specificity regarding the means for achieving his objectives and devoid, too, of acknowledgement that obstacles to achievement exist--just as in most of Salinas’ campaign speeches. He repeated that he was in favor of a political opening, a reduction of Mexico’s foreign-debt service and a Mexican “war on poverty”--goals that most Mexicans share--but he was peculiarly silent on how he means to obtain those noble aims.

More important, though, are the links between these disparate elements of the Mexican political scene. This is where the greatest doubts over the future and the true nature of the Salinas administration surface. As it is, the new president and his team have lost a great deal of their credibility and legitimacy since the July 6 election. Part of it can be recovered by their deeds, or in any case by the relationship between what they say and what they actually do.

So far, the record is ambivalent. Salinas again committed himself to clean elections and a major overhaul of the electoral system. But by naming Bartlett secretary of education, a key post in a nation where nearly half the population is under 15, he hardly gave the impression that he regretted last July’s events. The interior minister is in charge of all political affairs in the country. In many peoples’ minds--perhaps not fairly, but certainly for a reason--Bartlett is held responsible for the widespread tampering on election night. He is the widely perceived symbol of the De la Madrid administration’s lack of respect for electoral honesty.

This coming Sunday’s elections for governor of the state of Jalisco--which PAN candidate Manuel Clouthier nearly carried in July--and for mayor of Guadalajara, the nation’s second-largest city--which Clouthier did win--will be the first test of President Salinas’ democratic convictions.

Similarly, his promise to open up the Mexican media must be seen with reserve. As the left-of-center opposition walked out of the chamber and the PAN waved its banners, Mexican television, transmitting on a national government-run hookup, zoomed in on Salinas’ and De la Madrid’s faces on the rostrum and left the entire nation without any idea what was occurring in the hall. The opposition’s walkout was certainly something that the government frowned on. Perhaps it might not have gone down well with public opinion if the nation’s inhabitants had been able to witness it. They weren’t. The non Spanish-speaking foreign dignitaries present at the inauguration might not have endorsed, or even sympathized with, the opposition’s speeches. We will never know, because the government provided simultaneous translation from Spanish only for Salinas’ speech, not for the opposition’s.

Carlos Salinas is stronger today--a man comfortable with his newly acquired power--than he seemed back in July, August and early September, when there were doubts whether he would make it to inauguration. But he is weaker than the euphoria that a good speech indicates. The challenge for him is to change Mexico, even though change would mean his party’s and its political system’s demise. The real cost of achieving merely any one of the innumerable objectives that he set out in his speech is far greater than he believes or acknowledges. He may not want, or be able, to pay it.