PERSPECTIVE ON MEXICO : The Incredible Shrinking President : Election-season turmoil, including treachery in his own party, demands a firm hand, yet Salinas has all but abdicated.

President Carlos Salinas de Gortari has become an invisible man. As Mexico slouches from crisis to crisis, Salinas has become a mere figurehead who hands out prizes, inaugurates events, travels and creates government commissions, but no longer controls the country’s destiny. His political death has left Mexico trapped in a stalemate and without the leadership it so desperately needs to assure a free and fair presidential election on Aug. 21.

Alone and alienated at Los Pinos, the presidential residence, Salinas watches passively as his once-loyal collaborators engage in political warfare and the country unravels. The candidate of the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), Ernesto Zedillo, rarely mentions the president or his accomplishments; former peace commissioner (and Zedillo rival) Manuel Camacho Solis has left the Chiapas negotiations--and hence the PRI-dominated political agenda--in a lurch; guerrilla Subcommander Marcos has refused the presidential peace offer. Most recently, Interior Minister Jorge Carpizo attempted to resign his office, which supervises elections, charging that unspecified factions were trying to undermine the democratic process.

Mexico’s multiple political crises since the Chiapas revolt last January have revealed the flaws of a governing system built upon the political capital and the popularity of a single man. Salinas wanted to govern alone, and now he is alone. Faced with a turbulent country, a political class that cannibalizes itself and a national modernization project whose survival is at stake, Salinas has opted to remain silent, thus abandoning his presidential responsibilities.

In the past, Salinas used the transformative power of the presidency to change Mexico’s economic course; now he should tap into that reservoir and support Mexico’s political evolution.

When the presidential succession was assured, it was natural for the incumbent to ease up in the last months of his term. In the turmoil of this election, being fiercely contested by three candidates, Mexico needs a fully active president, one who is committed to decent elections and a pluralistic government; a president respected for his activism in favor of democracy and not condemned for his absence; a president who understands political competition as an unqualified good and not as a necessary evil. Mexico does not need to resuscitate the caudillos; too many of them already inhabit the country’s political class. However, the transition undoubtedly requires a helmsman.

Salinas has the historic opportunity to reinvent himself as the statesman he strove unsuccessfully to become. He has the chance to be the first Mexican president committed to political opening, not to the survival--at all costs--of the PRI. Instead of handing over the keys of the political kingdom to the party’s dinosaurs, he could support Carpizo’s democratic efforts; instead of exiling himself at Los Pinos, he could seize the initiative and generate a widespread public consensus for peaceful, free and fair elections; instead of lobbying for a job abroad (as head of the new World Trade Organization), he should finish the work waiting at home.

Hard-liners within the ruling party are attempting to take advantage of Salinas’ abdication of leadership and launch a silent coup d’etat that would guarantee their political renaissance. The most competitive election in Mexico’s history will bring together groups within the PRI that are hoping for fraud and groups that are willing--or feel compelled--to provide it. Zedillo’s less-than-popular candidacy may put more pressure on the party machinery to generate votes and turn a blind eye to illegal practices, particularly in remote rural areas.

Renowned and respected as a human-rights advocate and informal electoral ombudsman, Carpizo has managed to bridge the chasm of distrust among Mexico’s political parties. He tried to resign because he was unwilling to condone PRI-sponsored fraud and see his hard-earned reputation go up in smoke. To persuade Carpizo to stay on, Salinas made many promises, including the assurance of a squeaky-clean election. The question is whether he will keep his word and enforce it throughout the rank and file, even if the PRI loses.

Salinas has distinguished himself as a risk-taker and a high-stakes gambler. Thus it is paradoxical that when Mexico confronts him with the most significant challenge of his political career--the democratic gamble--the president wavers. If he does not rouse himself to action soon, history will have to judge Carlos Salinas as the incredible shrinking president who lost so much political weight by the end of his term that the presidential sash became too big for him.