Mexico’s Long-Ruling PRI Scrambles to Patch Up Holes : Politics: Under unprecedented attack, it seeks to close ranks with President-elect Zedillo about to assume office.

With just two days remaining before the most challenging transition of power in recent Mexican history, the long-ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party scrambled to close ranks and present a solid front for President-elect Ernesto Zedillo at a time when his party appears under unprecedented attack from within.

Amid reports of death threats against their most potent detractor, top leaders of the party that has governed Mexico for 65 years made a last-minute effort to discredit and isolate Mexico’s former deputy attorney general, Mario Ruiz Massieu. He resigned from the party and his post last week after accusing the leaders of covering up the assassination of his brother, the PRI’s second-ranking official, who was gunned down outside a Mexico City hotel in September.

Atty. Gen. Humberto Benitez, who is among those accused by his former deputy of conspiring to cover up the murder, used his final hours in office to declare in a communique published Monday that Ruiz Massieu’s investigation found insufficient evidence to charge any PRI officials with wrongdoing.

The attorney general’s staff also was reviewing possible criminal charges against the former deputy, based on a formal declaration filed Friday by PRI President Ignacio Pichardo. Pichardo, named as a principal in the alleged cover-up, demanded that the attorney general charge Ruiz Massieu with criminal “defamation and slander” as a result of his allegations, which Pichardo denied as “categorically false.”

Maria de los Angeles Moreno, the senator who replaced Ruiz Massieu’s slain brother, Francisco, as PRI secretary general, formally demanded similar criminal action Monday against Ruiz Massieu, who stated last week that the evidence showed Moreno should be charged with “various crimes” in the case.

“My conscience is clear,” Moreno declared in one of several weekend public appearances.

But copies of Ruiz Massieu’s evidence and his scathing report, now known simply as the “White Book,” remain in sealed boxes. And the former prosecutor, who reported several death threats against him in the days since he publicly blasted the ruling party and resigned last week, repeated his pledge to present the evidence to Zedillo for action when the president-elect takes the reins of the nation in one of its most difficult hours on Thursday.

The controversial report deals with just one of two major, unsolved political murders that will confront Zedillo and a new Cabinet that he must name this week. Taken together, the cases will present an immediate test of Zedillo’s long-stated platform of judicial and internal reform for a party and a political system that until recently have ruled with little challenge.

In another report issued Friday, the chief prosecutor investigating the assassination last March of the PRI’s chosen presidential successor, Luis Donaldo Colosio, said she had yet to solve the crime after an intensive effort. The convicted gunman, Mario Aburto Martinez, was sentenced to 42 years in prison last month, but prosecutor Olga Islas de Gonzalez identified at least 10 “lines of investigation” that should be pursued by the next administration.

Most analysts said the president-elect is faced with one of the most turbulent transitions in recent memory.

Zedillo has vowed to pursue both investigations aggressively after he takes office, but he has not commented on the substance of either case or identified the next attorney general, who will be responsible for continuing the probes.

In one of his most dramatic public appearances Monday, the 42-year-old president-elect focused not on his ruling party but on the opposition. Zedillo met for the first time with leaders of the populist Democratic Revolutionary Party, which was shunned by President Carlos Salinas de Gortari throughout his six-year term.

The meeting was a clear effort by Zedillo to build consensus and effect political reconciliation. Zedillo defeated two popular challengers with a record-low 50.1% of the vote in a hard-fought presidential election in August.

But, as a foreshadowing of what most analysts say lies ahead for Zedillo, Mexico’s respected weekly newsmagazine Proceso hit the streets Monday with photographs of Zedillo’s face and the back of Salinas’ head on the cover. Below them were the words “Tragic Inheritance.”

More on Mexico: For a profile of President-elect Ernesto Zedillo, who assumes power Thursday, and background on the national election last August, see the Special Report in the Nation/World section of the new TimesLink on-line service.

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