The Last Gasp of a Moribund System : Mexico: The ruling party goes through the motions for a candidate who’s banking all on a ghost.

For the first time--and almost certainly for the last--Mexico’s quasi-magical succession mechanism has been called into use twice to replace one leader: last November, when Luis Donaldo Colosio was appointed Carlos Salinas de Gortari’s successor, and now this past week as Ernesto Zedillo Ponce de Leon was chosen to succeed the assassinated Colosio. The mechanism had never been strained as much, and in this, its last hurrah, while it has performed admirably, it is clearly showing the signs of its old age.

The presidential prerogative of personally selecting a successor worked again: Zedillo was Salinas’ choice, and his alone. As always, there was no pretense of a democratic process, no alternative candidacies, no debate, no primaries, no vote. As on some other occasions, there were resistances, disgruntled though silent losers and, exceptionally, a lackluster cargada, the ceremony whereby thousands of pristas of all stripes and colors troop down to party headquarters or to the lucky candidate’s home to express their support and, hopefully, begin lining up for jobs in the next administration. The tragic circumstances in which the unveiling took place, and the resigned reluctance with which Zedillo was accepted, did not allow for much enthusiasm in the traditional buffalo charge that is such a distinctive feature of Mexican politics. Still, one cannot but marvel at the way in which the entire political elite of a nation of 90 million inhabitants can rally to the cause of a second-best candidate without one single public dissenting voice, simply because a sitting president, presiding over a failed presidency, asked them to.

But along with this impressive show of control, Salinas’ handling of the worst political crisis in the country’s contemporary history also revealed the intrinsic and fatal weaknesses of the system. There has been no successful presidency in Mexico since Adolfo Lopez Mateos left office in 1964; every other administration has ended in discredit, disgrace and disarray. Thus the succession mechanism inevitably implies a drastic break between the outgoing leader and the incoming one; it’s the only way the new leader can overcome the opprobrium heaped upon his predecessor. The failed president takes the heat and the blame for everything; the new one, whatever his responsibilities in the previous administration, acts as if he played no role in the fiasco.

Herein lies the reason so many Mexicans of all persuasions, including a surprising number of party and government officials, believe that the government of Carlos Salinas had something to do with the murder of Luis Donaldo Colosio. They are wrong: For Salinas, the political consequences and emotional impact of the assassination are such that it is inconceivable that Colosio’s elimination could have been a desired and deliberate solution to any imaginable problem. But the tensions between Colosio and Salinas were so apparent, were growing so rapidly and extending to so many spheres, that in an uninformed and eternally distrustful nation, the suspicions of misdeeds are unavoidable. Colosio had to break with Salinas, even had he faced no rivals in his quest for the presidency. Facing a strong contender like Cuauhtemoc Cardenas, and having to address the incessant unraveling of Salinas’ achievements, he had no choice.

Zedillo would have no choice either, all other things being equal--which they are not. He does not have the time, experience or political strength to consummate such a tricky maneuver even under ideal circumstances. So, if Zedillo cannot break with Salinas, he will try a different tack: Run on Colosio’s martyred coattails, powered by the “Pedro Infante effect.” Infante was Mexico’s star of stars in the 1940s and ‘50s, the golden years of the Mexican movie industry. When he died in an airplane crash in 1956, the outpouring of popular sentiment was extraordinary. Attending his funeral or following it on the radio remains a memorable moment in the lives of millions of Mexicans. Salinas and the PRI--the Institutional Revolutionary Party--are seeking to generate a similar groundswell in relation to Colosio, hoping they can thus propel Zedillo to victory. It was no accident that Zedillo mentioned Colosio 39 times in his 20-minute acceptance speech Tuesday.

It may work, but the course is a risky one. If the Pedro Infante effect does not deliver the votes, the only other option is ominous. It entails playing to the Mexican people’s fears of instability and violence, and promising order, a strong hand and a hard line--a temptation that every Mexican president has encountered but that only Gustavo Diaz Ordaz in 1968 succumbed to.

Mexico is a country where knowing what the people think or feel is no simple task. The sorrow, shock, despair or fear that are supposedly sweeping the nation’s psyche today are easier to detect in politicians’ speeches and journalists’ cliches than in any palpable signs of popular sentiment. No one can tell if the current sympathy for Colosio will last, or whether it is transferable to another candidate just because he invokes the martyr’s name. And there is no certainty that the clamor for law and order is greater than that for democracy. Going the low road and seeking to shut down the already narrow confines of Mexican democracy means reversing the attempts at true electoral reform that the Chiapas uprising has generated. It means risking further unrest in the south, as well as post-electoral strife come August. It is indeed a non-starter.

The country is in trouble. The unanimity of the political elite on which its authoritarian system has rested for decades has resulted in the absurd situation whereby, as Carlos Fuentes has said, there seem to be only two men (Salinas and Zedillo) and a ghost (Colosio) who can rule Mexico. A clean election and a substantive campaign will not solve all of the country’s problems; years of negligence and corruption require a lengthy cleanup. But they can help, and without them, few things seem possible.

Mexico has for years been a nation where only outcomes count. The time has come to begin building a process that makes outcomes largely irrelevant. The old process almost certainly is beyond repair.