Gadfly Is Questioned in Colosio Killing : Mexico: Social critic denies alleged ties to the chief suspect. They are said to be distantly related.

Rodolfo Macias, a gadfly who calls himself this nation’s provisional president, has finally gotten the government’s attention: The special prosecutor’s office summoned him to appear Monday evening to explain any relationship he may have had with Mario Aburto Martinez, the chief suspect in the assassination of ruling party presidential candidate Luis Donaldo Colosio.

According to Mexican newspaper reports, Macias and Aburto are distant relatives by marriage and Aburto once worked for Macias’ brother in Tijuana, where Colosio was fatally shot as he left a campaign rally March 23.

But Macias and Aburto’s brother deny any connection between their families. Macias said he believes he is being questioned “because (the government) wants to confuse public opinion.”

The purported links between Aburto and Macias--who was last seen in the news in 1992 being arrested as he swam across the San Antonio River toward then-presidential candidate Bill Clinton--are one of several seemingly far-fetched leads the special prosecutor’s office is following up as it attempts to solve the murder of Colosio, the man who was widely expected to be Mexico’s next president.

Rumors persist that drug traffickers planned the killing to destabilize the government, even though there is no evidence to back such claims. Further, a shadowy group calling itself the Mexican Front Against Government Corruption claimed responsibility for Colosio’s murder in a call last week to a Spanish-language weekly newspaper in Phoenix, Ariz.

“Luis Donaldo Colosio was the first target of many that are planned,” according to a statement from the group. It claims to have 7,000 members, including Mexicans working illegally in the United States, Mexican government officials, Mexican soldiers and Aburto.

Testifying last week at his own trial, Aburto, who authorities say has confessed to killing Colosio, said he acted alone.

Mexican-American activists in the Phoenix area and Southern California said they have never heard of the front.

Speculation about who masterminded the murder has been fed by a seeming setback Sunday in the government investigation, when a judge released a key figure in the alleged plot to assassinate Colosio. Judge Alejandro Sosa ruled there was insufficient evidence to try Rodolfo Rivapalacio, one of the organizers of crowd control for the Colosio rally.

Rivapalacio was under suspicion because he hired three of the private security guards believed to have helped Aburto get close to Colosio and who are now being tried as accessories to murder.

Ironically, his alleged connection with Aburto has gained Macias the attention that eluded him through six years of protests against the administration of President Carlos Salinas de Gortari. Macias founded the Mexicans for Democracy Party in December, 1988, when Salinas took office amid charges of election fraud. In July, 1989, the group created a “provisional government” and named Macias its president.

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Since then, in long letters to U.S. and Mexican newspapers and through public protests, Macias has tried to draw attention to his claims that the Salinas government lacks legitimacy.

In Los Angeles, the brother of the jailed suspect said he has no knowledge of a family link between the Aburtos and Rodolfo Macias. And the brother said that Marcelino Ortiz, who is married to Aburto’s aunt and with whom the murder suspect lived in Tijuana, had never said he was related to Macias or otherwise mentioned the political gadfly. “I don’t know him,” Rafael Aburto said when asked about Macias. “This is a lie. This guy is an opportunist who wants to be famous.”

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Darling reported from Mexico City and Rotella from Tijuana.