Mexico Cracks Door on Stormy Salinas Debate

It was a rare moment of candor and open debate for the political party that has ruled Mexico with an authoritarian hand for nearly seven decades.

The subject: expelling a former president--and his brother--from the party’s ranks for the first time in more than half a century.

“Indignation and embarrassment are the moral attitudes that unite us now in this ominous time of corruption and criminality!” Maria Luisa Mendoza, an outspoken member of the party’s elite central committee, shouted through the closed-circuit television sets that have helped open up the inner workings of Mexico’s arcane Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) this year.

“The PRI is now faced with the challenge of destroying such immoral vices. This is the moment to hear the people, as we hear ourselves speaking for them. . . . No one is above the law.”

Even before the party central committee meeting ended late Wednesday night, though, party leaders once again slammed the door on a process that has captivated Mexico.

The entire affair was referred to the party’s Honor and Justice Committee, which formally began deliberating behind closed doors Thursday on whether it should throw out former President Carlos Salinas de Gortari and his older brother, Raul. The mysterious process could take days or weeks.

But the drama within a ruling party that, from 1936 until now, has always closed ranks around its own is just the latest development in the expanding controversy surrounding the Harvard-educated former president and his family.

Stung by U.S. government disclosures this week that he is now on a Customs Service list of people whose movements are watched--though he’s not officially the target of any criminal investigation--former President Salinas faxed another letter to news organizations here from an unconfirmed location of self-exile, widely believed to be Cuba.

Unlike his last missive earlier this month, which alleged a conspiracy against him by another former president, Salinas this time asked all Mexicans to rally around the present government, partly to checkmate forces he says are trying to ruin the country.

“These are moments to support the effort and labor of President Ernesto Zedillo in favor of Mexico,” Salinas said in the letter, which also denied rumors that he had promised authorities here a list of 50 wealthy Mexicans involved in money laundering or drug trafficking.

“They are totally false. It is necessary to put a stop to rumors that look to damage our country,” added the former president, whose brother has been directly linked to more than $120 million in Swiss, British and Mexican bank accounts that law enforcement agencies suspect is, at least in part, derived from international narcotics trafficking.

Mexican prosecutors have said that Carlos Salinas is not the target of any investigations. But on Thursday, they were preparing additional charges of illegal enrichment against his older brother, who has been jailed since Feb. 28 on charges of masterminding last year’s murder of PRI Secretary-General Francisco Ruiz Massieu.

Raul Salinas, a prominent businessman who served in his brother’s administration, will be charged with using embezzlement or extortion to amass some of the tens of millions of dollars he deposited in bank accounts under an alias during the decade he served in various public posts, according to Mexico’s attorney general’s office. The older Salinas, 49, has asserted that the money is from legitimate sources, but he failed to meet a government deadline Tuesday to prove it.

In addition, he is among the targets of a global investigation by U.S., Swiss and Mexican authorities into the laundering of profits from Mexico’s powerful, lucrative drug cartels. That probe has deepened the international notoriety surrounding Mexico’s former first family.

But in Mexico, the debate about the fate of the Salinas brothers within their own ruling party underscores the radical changes that have taken place since Zedillo took office a year ago promising a new era of democracy and reform in the country and in the PRI.

That promise led to an extraordinary petition calling for the expulsion of the Salinas brothers that was signed by 81 ruling-party legislators in Mexico’s Senate and Chamber of Deputies last week.

“At a time like this, when the PRI is promoting a process of reform . . . it is necessary to show that our conduct is according to ethical principles,” the legislators’ petition declared. “For that reason, in the face of recent events, we support the revocation of the membership of Carlos and Raul Salinas from the PRI.”

The appeal marked the first time since 1936, when the party expelled and ordered the exile of former President Plutarco Elias Calles and a number of his supporters in an internal feud, that the party targeted a senior member of its ruling elite.

Ever since, under the PRI’s archaic system of succession, each outgoing president has handpicked his successor from within the party in what is known as the dedazo, or fingering. The process, which has served to insulate previous regimes from prosecution, was used by Salinas to select Zedillo after his first choice, Luis Donaldo Colosio, was gunned down at a Tijuana campaign rally five months before last year’s presidential polls.

But soon after taking office, Zedillo deliberately abandoned the tradition of protecting the family and friends of his predecessor. The arrest and trial of Raul Salinas on murder charges, Zedillo has said several times, is a dramatic illustration of a new policy in which no Mexican is above the law.

Taking those reform policies a step further during the PRI’s central committee meeting Wednesday, party President Santiago Onate applauded the legislators who made the formal expulsion appeal. He offered no opinion on the outcome but stressed that their act signifies “a new relationship with public power, a relationship in which one must hold vigil over the use of the people’s money.”

“But it is also essential,” Onate said, “that our party renew its relationship with its own membership, moving toward participation and respect . . . in which members can find in this party the source of expression, of debate and, as we’re showing here, of transforming popular will into action.”

It remained unclear Thursday whether the PRI will expel former President Salinas in the days ahead.

Some analysts close to the party speculated that the Honor and Justice Committee may well opt to throw out Raul Salinas but keep his brother, who was among Mexico’s most popular presidents before the nation’s worst economic crisis in more than a decade erupted just three weeks after he left office.

Despite the secrecy of the committee’s deliberations, Onate said its members will be fair.

“We are not a judicial organ, nor are we engaged in lynchings or summary justice,” Onate said.

Times researcher Shasta Darlington in Mexico City contributed to this report.