Mexico’s Salinas Calls for Campaign Finance Reforms

In a potentially important step toward democratic elections, President Carlos Salinas de Gortari called Sunday for campaign spending limits and “transparency” in the source of campaign financing.

Salinas, who has been forced to remove three ruling party governors after fraud-tainted votes, also said he would seek impartial election coverage from predominantly pro-government media.

“We must consolidate the perfecting of democracy and electoral transparency,” he said in his fourth state-of-the-nation speech. “More than great political changes, today the nation is demanding a democratic commitment from everyone.”

Opposition congressmen waved banners reading “Fair Suffrage” and “Clean Elections” as Salinas spoke before the Legislature, his Cabinet and the Supreme Court. But his speech was not interrupted by the angry protests that marked the first years of his administration.

Salinas said new voting credentials, carrying the voter’s photograph, that the government is issuing for the 1994 presidential election will help eliminate fraud. Opposition leaders, on the other hand, said the government’s efforts to clean up voter registration rolls have been unsatisfactory.

Opposition parties have been calling for campaign spending reforms to prevent the government from using public funds in support of candidates from the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, as the party that has ruled Mexico for 63 years is called.

While it has never been proven that the PRI uses government money, party fund-raisers are rare and yet the PRI enjoys great wealth. PRI candidates never seem able or willing to say how much money has been spent on their campaigns.

Opposition leaders applauded when Salinas announced the planned reforms, but said they would reserve judgment until they see whether he carries through.

“So far, there is no commitment to respect the vote,” said Cuauhtemoc Cardenas, leader of the left-of-center Democratic Revolutionary Party. “There is no commitment to get rid of the state party, that is, to end the PRI’s dependence on the state.”

Gonzalo Altamirano Dimas, a federal deputy from the conservative National Action Party, called the steps “important but insufficient” and said he doubts that Salinas has “the political will” to carry them out.

Last month, the ruling party’s newly inaugurated governor of Michoacan, Eduardo Villasenor, was forced to step down amid widespread protests that his election had been fraudulent.

Although there was some vote tampering, many observers believe Villasenor won the election. But the election was widely regarded as illegitimate because of the tremendous amount of government and ruling party spending in support of Villasenor’s campaign. His television ads were incessant, while the opposition was virtually invisible in ads and news reports.

Similarly, last year the newly elected PRI governors of Guanajuato and San Luis Potosi gave up their posts in the face of protests.

Salinas, who is entering his fifth year in power, dedicated the bulk of his two-hour speech to the economy, vowing to consolidate his program of free-market reforms. He said his policies had allowed the country to overcome the 1982 debt crisis, attracting foreign investment while retiring billions of dollars in foreign debt and spending more on social programs.