Mexico’s Ruling Party Sets Limit on Donations : Politics: New policy is response to outcry over reports that Salinas solicited millions of dollars in contributions.

Seeking to quell the fury over reports that President Carlos Salinas de Gortari solicited millions of dollars in political donations from Mexico’s richest business leaders, the head of the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party on Tuesday announced a limit of about $333,000 on contributions to a party trust fund.

The PRI, as the party that has governed Mexico for 64 years is called, also will not accept corporate donations, party President Genaro Borrego Estrada told a hastily called press conference.

Salinas immediately issued a statement lauding the limit and reiterating promises he made in his fourth state of the union speech last November to publicize the sources of political party financing, to limit campaign spending and to seek impartial political coverage in the media.

The PRI acted in response to criticism by opposition politicians and civic leaders over Salinas’ role at a private dinner party two weeks ago at which about 30 business magnates were asked to donate to a trust fund to finance the PRI.

The Mexican press reported that the business leaders were asked for as much as $25 million each. Government officials say no specific sum was requested and that the executives themselves put forth that figure.

“This (the $25-million figure) was spoken of very generally,” former Treasury Secretary Antonio Ortiz Mena, who hosted the party at his home, told reporters last week. “Some spoke of more, some of less.”

Ortiz Mena said the dinner and other fund-raisers were meant “to cut the umbilical cord” between the party and government. For decades, the PRI has been accused of living off public money; opposition parties have accused the government of financing the party and rigging elections in its favor.

The dinner party included not only the Rockefellers and Du Ponts of Mexico, the country’s old money, but also the nouveaux riches who have benefited from Salinas’ economic policies of privatization and open borders. Among the guests were Carlos Slim, who headed the investment group that bought the state-owned telephone company, and Roberto Hernandez, who led the purchase of the nation’s biggest bank, Banco Nacional de Mexico.

Slim and fellow guest Emilio Azcarraga, head of the Televisa media empire, are on the Forbes 400 list of the world’s richest people. Azcarraga dominates television in Mexico; Televisa’s programming is notorious for its pro-government bias.

Word of the Feb. 23 dinner first appeared three days later in the normally pro-government newspaper El Economista, which is partly owned by one of the guests. Opposition politicians, civic leaders and even some members of the PRI lashed out at the news. Critics said the party was trying to stock its war chest before changing political financing laws for the 1994 presidential election.

On Friday, Salinas vowed at the PRI’s 64th anniversary celebration that the PRI would “no longer be the party of the government,” but critics cited the dinner as proof that he has no intention of holding elections in which opposition parties have a chance to compete fairly.

Party and government officials denied influence-peddling and said that Salinas never personally engaged in any fund-raising. But critics call the solicitation of so much money in his presence “immoral.”

“In the Mexican system, no one can say no to the president,” said Sergio Aguayo, a leader of a citizens coalition pushing for electoral reform.

The headline on one column in Tuesday’s edition of the daily newspaper La Jornada summed up much of the critical sentiment: “He Who Pays, Rules.”

PRI officials said they have not received any money as a result of the dinner party and that all pledges made there were now void.

The announced 1-million-peso limit, about $333,000, is for contributions to the trust fund but does not apply to other forms of contribution to the party, said PRI spokeswoman Mariana Pria.

Currently, political contributions are effectively unregulated. PRI chief Borrego called for new laws governing party and campaign financing. The Congress is expected to take up this and other electoral reform issues next month.

In an effort to diversify its funding, the PRI recently started a lottery, issued a PRI Visa credit card and began to hold fund-raisers with business leaders.

On Sunday, the government news agency Notimex quoted a Veracruz state industrial leader as saying executives planned to contribute 25 million pesos--about $8 million--to the PRI in that state.

Rafael Messeguer, president of the Veracruz Industrial Assn., said most of the money already had been donated. He said the contributions were “to link up with certain officials; not to obtain illegitimate benefits, but yes, to have contacts with the people who at some moment could decide some issue of a bureaucratic nature that interests us.”

Times staff writer Juanita Darling contributed to this report.