POLITICS : Mexico Murder Arrests Hint of Cover-Up, Raise Doubts on Reform

Throughout President Carlos Salinas de Gortari’s five years in office, his detractors have pointed to the unsolved election-eve murders of two high-ranking opposition campaign officials as proof of how extreme political repression can be here.

Now, just as Salinas is pressing for passage of electoral reforms meant to assuage criticism that his widely acclaimed economic liberalization has not been accompanied by a greater political openness, a special prosecutor has turned up evidence that supports the worst suspicions about the deaths.

A former state attorney general and two of his subordinates have been arrested in connection with the murders. Testimony being released now suggests a cover-up stretching to the federal attorney general’s office.

News of the investigation has shared the front pages of national newspapers with opposition accusations that all points of view have not been considered in the current electoral reform.

The combination of the two concerns raises questions about the sincerity of Salinas’ electoral reform offer and, more specifically, how fair and democratic the 1994 presidential elections will be.

“The government wants to get this crime behind it before the 1994 elections,” said Adolfo Aguilar Zinser of the National Autonomous University of Mexico. “It has taken so long to solve this crime, whose links to the government have yet to be explained. This was clearly not a police investigation but a political investigation.”

The bloodied bodies of Francisco Xavier Ovando--who was coordinating a voting-watch campaign for leftist presidential candidate Cuauhtemoc Cardenas--and his assistant, Roman Gil Heraldez, were found in a car on a downtown street four days before the 1988 election, in which many Mexicans believe Cardenas was cheated out of a victory.

Mexico City police first blamed the murders on criminals Ovando had investigated while attorney general of the state of Michoacan. But under pressure from Ovando’s colleagues, the case was turned over in January, 1992, to special federal prosecutor Leonel Godoy, a former federal deputy for Cardenas’ Democratic Revolutionary Party, known as the PRD.

Godoy found that the investigation was fraught with irregularities and manipulations of testimony and evidence. A key witness told Godoy that state and federal agents promised him his release from prison, a passport and money to leave the country in return for testimony accusing PRD officials of masterminding the murders. The witness said he was interviewed by an official of the federal attorney general’s office.

Godoy ordered the arrest of Jose Franco Villa, the former Michoacan state attorney general, and two associates, Adolfo Suarez Teran and Eduardo Estrada Perez. They are accused of taking part in the cover-up and a related murder of a state police officer.

“This connection with the state government confirms what we always suspected,” said Sergio Aguayo, president of the independent Mexican Human Rights Academy. “I just hope the investigation goes all the way up to the person who gave the order. It shows how deeply corrupt and degraded our law enforcement agencies are.”

Unearthing the facts surrounding the double murder also provides a haunting suggestion of how far some party faithful may be willing to go to assure a candidate’s victory in a presidential election. Tens of thousands of patronage jobs throughout the country depend on such elections; the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party, known as PRI, has not lost one in six decades.

Under Salinas, right-wing opposition party governors have taken office for the first time in three states. But PRD victories have been recognized only in municipal and legislative elections.

The electoral reform Salinas sent to Congress in July is supposed to provide the assurance of free, fair elections in time for next year’s presidential race. It would: limit sources of campaign financing; give each state a third senator, representing the party that was first runner-up in elections, and turn over ratification of elections--now a congressional prerogative--to an appointed elections board.

The changes require constitutional amendments, which must be passed by two-thirds of the Congress. The PRI has a simple majority but needs votes from other parties to change the constitution.