NEWS ANALYSIS : Reform Is Next Task for New Mexican Leader

While Ernesto Zedillo--the bookish new face of one of the world’s longest-ruling political parties--apparently has won the hardest-fought presidential battle here in more than six decades, now he must fight the war.

First, the bespectacled Yale economics Ph.D. who held a comfortable lead Monday over his two closest rivals must convince the Mexican people and the world that his victory was clean. Most analysts said that would be relatively simple to do, compared with his next task.

More important, he must do nothing less than fulfill his promise to revolutionize and reform the Institutional Revolutionary Party, which has kept a stranglehold on Mexico’s political power for 65 years.

And, analysts said, he must do so before it’s too late.

Zedillo’s vow to change the PRI was at the core of his five-month campaign--a slick, multimillion-dollar, pro-democracy pitch carried on television, radio and at dozens of rallies. The campaign sought to convince tens of millions of Mexicans that the only safe change comes from within.

Now, with returns indicating victory--probably with less than 50% of the vote over a potentially powerful opposition--Zedillo faces the daunting task of making good on his widely publicized pledge to usher in a new era of true Mexican democracy by unraveling a party and a government that have become synonymous in six decades of rule, and curbing the very structure that has kept the party in control since 1929.

The authoritarian Mexican presidency, critics say, has been unchecked by Mexico’s Congress, its judiciary and even the ruling party. But in a speech Zedillo delivered 2 1/2 weeks ago, entitled “Now is the hour of democracy,” he declared to an auditorium packed with party faithful that Mexico’s “chief executive does not receive a party mandate; he governs for all.”

If elected, Zedillo said he would govern through dialogue and consensus with all eight opposition parties. He pledged to respect Congress’ autonomy and power for the first time.

Zedillo then stunned the Old Guard in the room by announcing he also would be the first to give up one of the ultimate powers of Mexico’s ruling party presidents--”the finger,” as the process of anointing presidential successors has come to be known here.

Critics, cynics and Mexico’s pro-democracy activists were unconvinced. Many remained skeptical Monday, as election returns churned out of the government’s central computers, many of which were staffed by PRI rank and file.

“Even if Zedillo is sincere, he’s only one man,” said one Mexican political analyst. “The system and the party is everywhere--in every department of government, in every state and in every institution. And then, of course, we have the dinosaurs”--the corrupt, Old Guard bosses within the PRI who still wield enormous, regional clout and are likely to seek their pay-back from Zedillo for getting out the vote for him Sunday.

Jorge Castaneda, a professor at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, observed: “A big PRI win, of course, means they have no real impetus for change. Personally, though, I think there’s an absolute certainty that, in the next two to three years, things are going to change--one way or the other. People are fed up. If things don’t change right now, they will change through non-electoral means. This cannot go on.”

Clearly, Zedillo will not win big. With more than a third of the vote counted, he was headed for the smallest victory of any ruling party president in modern history. If the trend continues, he would be the first Mexican president in six decades to win with less than 50% of the vote.

The threat that the opposition would hold such political power, and “non-electoral” vehicles for change--such as the Zapatista guerrilla army in the southern state of Chiapas--will force Zedillo to fulfill his election promises, one way or the other, other analysts said.

One senior adviser said Monday that Zedillo is well aware of the pressures and the high stakes. In coming weeks, he said, Mexico’s apparent president-elect--privately and diplomatically--will tell his party’s Old Guard “very simply that they have no choice.”

“You simply have to look at these election results,” the adviser said. The party dinosaurs “are going to have to realize that, for the first time, we have had very hard competition. This isn’t going to go away.”

The opposition, he said, will “be there, in Congress and in the streets. We either have to change or we’re not going to be the ruling party ever again.”

He and his associates said Zedillo plans to make his party’s newly appointed “ideological chief” the key player in developing plans for precise reforms within the PRI and throughout the government--particularly in the corrupt judiciary. Zedillo has set a Nov. 1 deadline and advisers said he is committed to forcing the party to vote on a comprehensive reform package even before he takes office Dec. 1.

“Zedillo is committed to move very quickly on setting a new rule of order for the PRI and have it completely separated from the government before he assumes office,” the senior adviser said.

But for many Mexican political observers, that is an impossible goal.

“The only way to reform the PRI is to vote it out of office,” said Castaneda, one of many pro-democracy activists who recall similar pledges of reform from President Carlos Salinas de Gortari.

Six years ago, after the last presidential elections, Salinas promised sweeping reform when declared the winner with just 50.7% of the vote. His victory then was tainted by the widely held view that the PRI and the government had manufactured the results after the central computers crashed during the vote counting.

In advance of Sunday’s election, Salinas did implement electoral reforms that he and independent analysts credited with permitting competition that grew so stiff that some party insiders feared until weeks before the elections that Zedillo would lose.

He did not lose, of course, although both leading opposition candidates, Diego Fernandez de Cevallos and Cuauhtemoc Cardenas, charged that Zedillo’s apparent victory came through fraud or an electoral system still stacked in the PRI’s favor.

Opposition analysts said that, at the least, Zedillo and the PRI apparently had won by doing what the ruling party has done best for decades--adapting and co-opting, even the new electoral reforms.

Just moments after the polls closed, Zedillo--tired and without a tie--effused confidence to a small group of journalists at the party’s towering headquarters. This was hours before the first official vote results were announced by the Federal Electoral Institute. But Zedillo smiled and laughed as he described the source of his optimism.

“This morning, I woke up at 6 a.m. with the sun in my face, and I said to my wife, ‘We are going to win,’ ” Zedillo said. “ ‘Why?’ she asked me. ‘Because,’ I said, ‘the sun is out.’ ”

Aides said it was vintage Zedillo, a folksy attempt at humor by a candidate most often criticized for his lack of humor and color.

But Zedillo’s real source of confidence was a package of exit polls commissioned by the party and by powerful, private institutions that depend upon political stability--and the PRI.

The polls, which the government permitted for the first time as a concession to opposition demands for an independent accounting of this year’s tally, were quickly followed by equally unprecedented quick counts.

In denouncing the results of all the polls and quick counts, Cardenas and other critics declared that these tools, aimed at helping the opposition ensure a fair vote, had instead become part of “a montage” of electoral deceit by the PRI and its supporters. Why? Because they were the only ones who could afford the costly polls and tallies.

Their aim, Cardenas said, was to convince a jaded electorate that the ruling party could win cleanly and fairly.

But Cardenas’ cry of foul appeared to gather little support Monday.

Mainstream analysts conceded the PRI’s money and power advantages but attributed the emerging Zedillo victory more to the campaign theme that they said had played to Mexican voters’ conservative streak--the fundamental fear of radical change at a time of deep uncertainty.

“Zedillo has heard the voters’ voices loud and clear,” his senior adviser said. “He also knows that we are now facing a new era of very close political competition. And that alone is going to force the party to change.”