Salinas’ Battle Cry May Bring Havoc, Analysts Say : Mexico: Ex-leader’s allegations and offer to return could rend ruling party or trigger social unrest, observers warn.

The verbal battle launched by one former Mexican president against another was fast becoming an ideological confrontation Tuesday that analysts said threatens to further polarize Mexico’s ruling party.

As the fallout continued from former President Carlos Salinas de Gortari’s allegations that ex-President Luis Echeverria was plotting against him, many independent analysts also concluded that Salinas’ pending offer to return to Mexico, where many blame him for the nation’s deep economic crisis and for the spread of corruption during his six years in office, could further destabilize the country.

Evoking images of guillotines, lynchings and stonings, analysts said Salinas’ return could ignite social unrest and further undermine the government of President Ernesto Zedillo, which has been aggressively prosecuting Salinas’ brother for murder and also investigating him for corruption. Salinas personally selected Zedillo as his successor, but relations between the two have been strained since Salinas’ elder brother, Raul Salinas de Gortari, was arrested in February on charges of masterminding the 1994 murder of a top ruling-party official.

“For [former President] Salinas, it would be like putting himself in front of a guillotine if he came back; for Zedillo, it would be like opening Pandora’s box,” concluded Emilio Zebadua, political science professor at the Colegio de Mexico in Mexico City. “It would be destabilizing because Zedillo knows that he owes everything to Salinas. . . . Zedillo still owes his respect and loyalty.”

Zedillo has remained publicly aloof from the conflict. He made no reference in his speeches Tuesday to Salinas’ allegations, which were faxed to news organizations in Mexico City late Sunday night from an undisclosed location. Reliable sources said government intermediaries had recently been in touch with Salinas, who left Mexico for the United States in March.

But when Salinas faxed his eight-page letter professing his innocence of any wrongdoing and accusing Echeverria of leading a conspiracy to discredit him, Zedillo’s aides reportedly had to call a national television station to obtain a copy of it, the sources said.

On Tuesday, Interior Secretary Emilio Chuayffet offered only a one-line comment on the affair: “Mexico is a free country, and everyone has the right to express themselves,” he told reporters as he left a meeting with the president.

“I think President Zedillo has pretty much decided he can’t do anything,” said political analyst Sergio Sarmiento, who noted that, unlike in previous political spats in this year of economic crisis, Mexico’s financial markets “haven’t even blinked” at the latest scandal. The markets closed virtually unchanged Tuesday afternoon.

Sarmiento, Zebadua and other analysts agreed, however, that the former president has succeeded in creating a potentially dangerous national debate by elevating a personal squabble into an ideological conflict. In his efforts to clear his name, they said, Salinas could further weaken the already strife-ridden party that has ruled Mexico for most of this century.

“Salinas is painting with very broad brush strokes a conflict between projects--the project of the technocrats and the project of the dinosaurs,” Zebadua said. “Dinosaurs” is a widely used term for the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party’s conservative faction, which has been resisting economic and political reform.

“Salinas chose to portray Echeverria as the head of the dinosaurs to paint the picture in black and white . . . , but it’s oversimplified; this is not just one group against another.”

Echeverria briefly came out of silent retirement Monday night to deny Salinas’ charges, asserting that he cannot “even coordinate my many children and grandchildren” let alone a smear campaign.

But the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, has been divided over economic reform since Salinas first began opening up Mexico’s economy after he was elected in 1988, and it has been sharply split over political reform since Zedillo began promoting clean elections and accountability by officials in both the government and the ruling party. In magnifying that conflict, the analysts said, Salinas is driving a deeper wedge between the two factions. According to Sarmiento, it ultimately will force the PRI as a whole “to figure out just what it stands for: nationalism or liberalism.”

“It is a dangerous process because the party can split,” Sarmiento said. “I’m not concerned about the PRI splitting. I’m concerned about the possible mischief in the power vacuum that would leave behind.”