Aides to Try Removing Roadblocks for Mexico City’s First Mayor-Elect

Armando Lopez likens his job from now until December to that of a doctor trying to examine an ailing alien from another planet.

“We will ask, ‘What is it that you feel? How does this work? How is that structured?’ ” he said. “And we will make a conclusion that could be compared to a doctor’s diagnosis: ‘Well, this doesn’t seem very good.’ ”

Lopez’s job is nothing less than helping to prepare one of the world’s largest and most deeply troubled cities for democratic rule after seven decades of virtual dictatorship.

As one of seven members of a transition team created by Cuauhtemoc Cardenas, Mexico City’s first mayor-elect, Lopez is responsible for helping the leftist leader unlock the mysteries of how this overcrowded, crime-ridden, polluted metropolis of more than 20 million has been run by a succession of presidential appointees.

Among Lopez’s most important tasks when the transition team formally enters City Hall to start work in mid-August will be to keep an eye on the money. The team will seek, with its presence, to prevent the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party government from squandering the $4-billion or so city budget, leaving Cardenas and his Democratic Revolution Party with empty coffers when they take power Dec. 1.

That task appears daunting. Lopez said he is well aware that his team will have no real power. And its access to information will be limited to what the government of Mayor Oscar Espinosa Villareal decides to pass along.

“This team will only receive information,” said Jorge Martinez, one of Cardenas’ closest aides. “It will not say anything, decide anything or have any opinions. They will not have any power to demand. They will only receive what is there.”

Speaking at a lunch with local reporters last week, Espinosa vowed to cooperate fully with Cardenas’ team. And he stressed that his government will leave behind many public works projects already in progress, as well as a budget that is as healthy as other realities allow.

The worst of these realities: Cardenas, voted into office in a July 6 landslide, will inherit a city hopelessly in debt. Recent figures released by banks here show that the federal district of Mexico City leads the nation’s 31 states in debt and in overdue loans.

*

Adding to those financial woes are lingering concerns that the new mayor--a career leftist and the son of a former president best remembered for nationalizing Mexico’s petroleum industry--will scare off new foreign investment. Cardenas must get such investment to create promised new jobs in a city where unemployment is endemic.

Partly as a hedge against such fears, Cardenas spent last week working on one aspect of the transition: He visited New York to deliver a message of reassurance to Wall Street and represent Mexico City at a U.N. conference.

Cardenas and his transition team’s success in paving the way for a new administration that can increase the city’s job opportunities while decreasing its crime, pollution and outstanding debt may well be key to the country’s political future.

The mayoral post in vote-rich, high-profile Mexico City is widely seen as a potential trampoline to the nation’s presidency in 2000. Cardenas has run unsuccessfully for president twice and makes no secret of his presidential ambitions.

But if he is seen as a failure in his three-year stint at Mexico City’s helm, the negative impact on his--and his party’s--political future will be just as profound.

For the time being, however, Cardenas and his transition team are focusing on matters closer to hand. Just forming the team, in fact, generated Cardenas’ first controversy: He was forced to withdraw the nomination of an eighth member--one of his sons--when critics charged him with nepotism.