Salinas Assumes Office in Mexico : Vows to Put Nation’s Interest Above That of Debt Holders

Amid street protests and an opposition walkout, Carlos Salinas de Gortari was sworn in as president of Mexico on Thursday and said in his inaugural address that the country’s debt burden is “unacceptable and unsustainable.”

In a measured style but employing strong language, Salinas said that Mexico cannot continue current payments on its $104-billion foreign debt and hope to turn around its stagnant economy. He ordered his treasury secretary to negotiate a new deal with international creditors.

“I will avoid confrontation, but I declare emphatically and with conviction that above the interests of the lenders is the interest of Mexico,” Salinas said. “The priority now will not be to pay, but to resume growth.”

Leftist congressmen from the National Democratic Front walked out of the Legislative Palace before the ceremony, saying they would not validate the inauguration with their presence. Rightist National Action Party deputies, meanwhile, waved placards charging election fraud.

Salinas was sworn in for his six-year term in the presence of U.S. Secretary of State George P. Shultz and eight Latin American heads of state, including President Fidel Castro of Cuba.

Opposition political parties charge that Salinas won the July 6 presidential election by cheating. Several thousand chanting supporters of leftist opposition leader Cuauhtemoc Cardenas marched in groups throughout the city to protest the inauguration, while riot police lined the main boulevards of the capital.

A military parade filled the Zocalo, Mexico City’s central square, but soldiers later surrounded the plaza to bar protesters from the presidential palace. At least two scuffles broke out between riot police and demonstrators, one in the Zocalo and another near the Legislative Palace.

Red Cross spokesman Alfonso Manzo said that 180 people were treated for injuries at first aid stations near the Zocalo. Police spokesman Jose Luis Hernandez said there were no arrests.

Salinas, 40, a Harvard-trained economist, won election with an official count of 50.7% of the vote, the lowest ever for a candidate of the Institutional Revolutionary Party, which has ruled for 60 years.

Cardenas, a defector from the ruling party, ran against Salinas in the presidential election on a platform that included a debt moratorium. He won an unprecedented 30% of the official vote count, but his supporters contend he won the election and chanted his name throughout the streets Thursday. Cardenas himself led one of the protest marches.

In his inaugural address, Salinas vowed to “modernize” Mexico’s economy and to open up the political system to the opposition.

Mexico has been paying 5% of its gross national product to finance the foreign debt, he said. He added that the criteria for renegotiating payments would be to lessen the flow of money out of the country to allow sustained growth; to reduce the value of the debt, and to make all new loans and debt agreements long-term “to avoid the uncertainty provoked by annual negotiations.”

During his term, Salinas said, Mexico’s population will increase to 95 million people, with 9 million additional students entering the schools and 1 million youths annually entering the work force.

“To confront these challenges, we must grow,” he declared.

He reiterated his free-market policies and his commitment to reduce the role of the state in the economy to make Mexico more efficient, competitive and integrated into the world market.

Salinas’ economic Cabinet, led by Treasury Secretary Pedro Aspe, is proven in its commitment to that policy. Aspe worked for Salinas, who served as secretary of budget and planning in the outgoing administration of Miguel de la Madrid. Aspe replaced Salinas as secretary after Salinas was handpicked by De la Madrid to succeed him as president.

Aspe was the architect of an unpopular wage and price control pact that has brought monthly inflation down from 15% to 1%.

On the political front, Salinas promised a dialogue with opposition parties and clean and fair elections with improvements in national electoral laws.

“I have decided to carry out a democratic reform,” he said. “We guarantee the free will of Mexican voters will be respected.”

But Salinas also has named several known hard-liners to his Cabinet who are identified with the PRI’s old-style, monopoly politics and are not known for making concessions.

The new secretary of the interior, who oversees elections and internal security, is Fernando Gutierrez Barrios, a high-ranking police official for 20 years before becoming governor of Veracruz state. And the new education secretary is Manuel Bartlett Diaz, secretary of interior in the current administration and the man who oversaw Salinas’ election.

“This is the consecration of the dinosaurs, to name the great author of electoral fraud to educate our children,” said opposition Sen. Porfirio Munoz Ledo of Cardenas’ Democratic National Front. “This is a continuation of old politics and contrary to modernism. Salinas is politically and psychologically weak.”

Munoz Ledo and other leftist leaders expressed anger that Castro and President Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua added their stamp of approval to Salinas by attending his inauguration.

Opposition Talks Allowed

For the first time, opposition leaders were allowed to make televised speeches questioning Salinas’ election before the inauguration ceremony began. In return, the opposition agreed not to cause havoc at the actual ceremony, as they did during De la Madrid’s final state of the nation speech Sept. 1.

The walkout and protest signs were not shown on television, and PRI delegates quickly filled the opposition’s empty seats.

Democratic Front delegate Marcela Lombardo said in her speech that the people of Mexico had voted for a “radically different” economic program than the one Salinas proposed.

National Action Party deputy Abel Vicencio Tovar said, meanwhile, that because of fraud “the origin of this president’s election is illegitimate.”