Salinas, Amid Jeers, Defends His Economic Program : Mexico: The president’s first state-of-the-nation address also criticizes big government.

In a display of Mexico’s growing political pluralism, President Carlos Salinas de Gortari delivered his first state-of-the-nation speech Wednesday amid jeers from hostile lawmakers, then flew to this northern city to attend the inauguration of the country’s first opposition governor.

Salinas made a dramatic break with the past during his nationally televised speech, criticizing the big, paternalistic government that emerged from the 1910 Mexican Revolution and has prevailed for the last 70 years.

The president defended his controversial economic “modernization” program, which has allowed the sale of valuable state enterprises once considered untouchable. He said the role of the state now should be limited to defending the country’s sovereignty and carrying out justice.

“The reality is that in Mexico, a larger state has resulted in less capacity to respond to the social demands of our fellow citizens,” Salinas said.

“The state concerned itself more with administering its properties than with meeting pressing social needs.”

Salinas also declared that the massive agrarian reform program that stemmed from the revolution is all but over.

“Large-scale land distribution has been completed. Anyone who asserts that there are still millions of acres of land to be distributed is lying,” he said.

As Salinas addressed a joint session of Congress at the Palace of Fine Arts in Mexico City, more than 10,000 teachers, musicians and government health workers demonstrated outside for higher wages and union democracy.

Salinas was interrupted and booed at least 10 times during his two-hour speech by lawmakers from the left-of-center Democratic Revolutionary Party and small parties that oppose his economic program and charge that his government is undemocratic.

Nearly half the lower-house Chamber of Deputies is made up of opposition members as a result of the 1988 national elections in which the official Institutional Revolutionary Party received its lowest vote ever in 60 years of rule. That event has changed the face of politics in Mexico, allowing for once-unheard-of practices such as jeering the president’s annual speech.

Salinas praised the clean gubernatorial election in Baja California, which gave victory to the conservative National Action Party’s candidate, Ernesto Ruffo Appel, while National Action legislators chanted, “Ruffo! Ruffo!”

A former mayor of Ensenada, Ruffo beat the ruling party’s candidate in a hotly contested election last July. Salinas’ national party chairman recognized the opposition victory over the protests of state party officials.

National Action also won the mayoralties of Tijuana and Ensenada, but the ruling party, called PRI, held on to Tecate and the state capital, Mexicali.

Ruffo attended the president’s speech in Mexico City. The two of them then flew aboard the president’s plane to Mexicali to attend Ruffo’s inauguration for a six-year term.

Ruffo took his oath of office in a state auditorium amid the deafening cheers of thousands of supports. Addressing Salinas, Ruffo said, “We know we are beginning a new stage in the history of Mexico here and we sincerely want the best for our nation. . . . I believe you govern for all Mexicans as I will govern for all Baja Californians.”

Salinas, who lost Baja California in last year’s presidential election, was greeted with a standing ovation. In a receiving line afterwards, hundreds of people shook his hand and thanked him for honoring the elections.

But earlier, during Salinas’ State of the Union speech speech, members of the Democratic Revolutionary Party shouted, “What about Michoacan?” and “We repudiate electoral fraud!”

Their party, led by Cuauhtemoc Cardenas, accuses the government of stealing the Michoacan state legislative election on the same day as the Baja vote. National Action leaders also charge the government with fraud in the Mazatlan and Culiacan mayoral races last month in Sinaloa state.

In his speech, Salinas applauded a controversial electoral reform package approved by the Congress last month that is supposed to ensure fair national elections in the future. He noted that for the first time, the PRI needed opposition support for the two-thirds majority required to pass a constitutional reform.

National Action voted with the government party, but the Democratic Revolutionary Party charged that the reform accomplished nothing.

“Counter-reform!” they shouted as Salinas spoke.

Without mentioning their party by name, Salinas lambasted “small groups that dogmatically insist on all or nothing.”

National Action Party deputies apparently did not take part in the verbal hostility, but they refused to stand or applaud the president.

Their congressional leader, Abel Vicencio Tovar, defended his party’s support for slow, moderate reforms.

“An all-or-nothing strategy has resulted in a history of leaping from failure to failure,” he said.

Salinas attempted to show that his economic reforms are paying off. His government has sold the nation’s largest airline, Mexicana, as well as parts of the basic commodities company, Conasupo, and parts of the state telephone company.

He is allowing private investment in petrochemicals production, although the national petroleum company, Pemex, remains in government hands.

Salinas said the nation’s economy grew 2.5% the first six months of the year, and he projected a year-end growth rate of 2.5% to 3%. He said inflation is running 17.3% annually--a rate that he called the lowest in more than a decade. Mexico’s foreign reserves are $7.3 billion. Salinas said his government’s agreement with commercial banks to reduce a $100-billion foreign debt was “sufficient,” but opposition legislators shouted their disagreement.