PERSPECTIVE ON MEXICO : Voter Apathy Has Its Cynical Uses : When a party needs only 3 million votes in an electorate of 35 million, it pays to discourage citizen participation.

Conventional wisdom sums up Carlos Salinas de Gortari’s first two years in office as a contradiction between economic steps forward and political immobility, or perhaps even steps backward. There is truth to this: Inflation has been brought down, important economic reforms are under way, while electoral fraud, human-rights violations and media control persist and may be getting worse. But beyond the catchy contrasts, there are clear links between President Salinas’ political and economic performance. They can be illustrated with three equations that tell the story of his first two years and possibly of his entire term.

The first equation involves a foreign constraint on economic growth. This is not the only constraint, of course--inflation is still hovering around 30% yearly and could skyrocket if the economy overheats--but it appears to be the most difficult one to overcome. Mexico’s sudden, across-the-board opening to foreign trade, together with a virtual three-year freeze of the exchange rate, has led to a dramatic deterioration of the country’s trade balance this year and last: In July and August, the deficit topped $500 million per month, despite high oil prices; the annual deficit will again reach $5 billion to $6 billion, which is barely what foreign investment, capital flows and new lending will bring in. Meanwhile, the economy is growing by only 2% to 2.5%, the equivalent of zero per-capita growth.

The social consequences of this state of affairs also can be summed up in a simple equation. If the economy grows at 2.5%, then employment must grow at the same rate minus productivity growth. In view of the economic policies that Salinas has adopted, such as industrial retooling, it is likely that productivity will rise at about 2% to 2.5% per year, which is still below the rate at which it grew during the 30 years before 1982. At best, employment will grow at half a percentage point yearly, but the working-age population will continue to increase by more than 3% a year. Consequently, unemployment will rise by about 2% yearly.

This presents Salinas with a profound political problem: how to win a fair election at a time when people are losing ground economically.

Theoretically, an obsolete and discredited one-party regime could stay in power cleanly if it generated economic growth and brought prosperity to Mexico once again. Conversely, a regime free of old ties, vices and ghosts could maintain itself in power honorably even if it could not improve most peoples’ standard of living. But the conjunction of 60 years of power and economic and social stagnation is devastating. The problem lies in the need to win elections: The government is forced to hold them periodically, and the cost of stealing them is increasing exponentially. Thus the third equation: The only way to hold elections and not lose them or steal them is to ensure that hardly anybody votes.

In a three-party electoral competition, which is what Mexico has today, a plurality of around 35% of the vote is enough to stay in power. This is why Salinas’ new election law gives the party that leads, if only with 35% of the vote, an automatic majority of the seats in Congress. The issue then becomes one of voter participation.

Half of the registered 35 million voters might participate in a presidential election; in congressional elections, perhaps no more than one-third. If the PRI (the Institutional Revolutionary Party) could reduce voter turnout to 7 million, it would need only 3 million votes to obtain 35% and keep its majority in Congress. It might be a bit embarrassing to run a country of 85 million people with only 3 million votes, but the party has never been too concerned about embarrassment.

Since everybody in Mexico believes that “the PRI always wins anyway,” it is not difficult to discourage voting. Ostentatious fraud is an effective way of reaffirming voter apathy. But there are other instruments available: shaving names from electoral rolls, shifting polling places, opening them late and closing them early.

Would such a cynical strategy work? It might, particularly if the rest of the world acquiesces. The only clouds on the horizon are the growing pressures in Mexico, the United States and Canada to link free-trade negotiations to political reform, human rights and a so-called social charter. The reluctance of the U.S. Congress to grant President Bush fast-track authorization for free trade is one symptom of this trend. Another is the call by a growing number of political groups here for international observation of elections in Mexico. Still another is a letter signed by Carlos Fuentes, Jesus Silva Herzog and five other Mexican intellectuals, including the writer of this column, calling for a slowing-down of the free-trade negotiations and a broadening of the agenda.

Salinas’ three equations may lead to a highly successful term or to a debacle. Most likely, they will lead to a repetition of what we have seen so far: muddling through, with occasional fireworks but with no major catastrophes and no dramatic improvement in the lot of the Mexican people.