Mayor-Elect Promises Change for Mexico City

As soon as Cuauhtemoc Cardenas takes over as mayor of one of the world’s largest and most unwieldy cities--a nightmare of snarled traffic, polluted air, corrupt cops and patronage politics--he plans to fire about 500 senior municipal officials.

The 63-year-old civil engineer and career leftist, who was voted into Mexico’s second-most-powerful job in a landslide last Sunday, will keep the remaining 170,000 city workers, said one of his top aides. Those are the electricians, subway workers, garbage collectors, bus drivers, bureaucrats, police officers, technicians and street sweepers who were used as a political army to help keep the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) in power here for seven decades.

The mayor-elect hopes to win their hearts and minds as he tries to solve the seemingly endless array of problems that authoritarian PRI rule has left behind, said Marcos Gonzalez, Cardenas’ transition point man.

This city with a core population of 8 million chose Cardenas over seven rivals in the capital’s first-ever mayoral election, giving him 50% of the vote. And his Democratic Revolution Party, or PRD, won a commanding majority on the City Council. So overwhelming was Cardenas’ victory that the PRI’s local chairman, Roberto Campa, announced Tuesday that he will resign.

Gonzalez cited some key moves that Cardenas plans to make after he takes office Dec. 5:

* To rid the city’s notoriously corrupt police force not only of crooked commanders but also of the Mexican army. That plan could put him on a collision course with President Ernesto Zedillo, who appointed a senior military officer as Mexico City’s police chief two years ago. Zedillo--not Cardenas--retains the power over that civilian post.

* To attack corruption not only at the highest levels of government but also at street level. Garbage collection, for example, is officially a free municipal service, but it is never provided unless residents and businesses pay bribes to the garbage collectors, who solicit payoffs door to door.

“We have to start at the top and go to the very bottom and clean it all up,” Gonzalez said. Ironically, many of the workers at the bottom have said they voted for Cardenas.

* To tackle the vexing air pollution problem by doing something no other Mexico City government has: try to determine exactly how many cars--the source of 70% of the pollution--are on the streets each day and then negotiate agreements with neighboring states to reduce the number of commuters to the capital.

“We have created a society that benefits the drivers instead of having an efficient, positive and economical public transportation system,” Gonzalez said.

On each count, Cardenas and his inner circle conceded that unchallenged rule by PRI-appointed mayors has placed towering obstacles in their path. And many analysts wonder whether Cardenas--or anyone--can overcome them to achieve his stated goals during his short term: just two years and eight months.

The city’s massive work force is a prime illustration of the problems. The workers and their jobs are protected by ruling-party-run labor unions, which are expected to complicate Cardenas’ plan to purge corruption from municipal ranks.

*

Gonzalez and other advisors said they are ready with an alternative: In addition to changing the 500 or so officials at the top, they will try to change people’s mentality--especially that of mid-level bureaucrats.

“In 70 years, the citizens here have not made decisions about their city,” Gonzalez said. “It was a city of the authorities. Decisions have been imposed from the top. Now we want to create a city of the citizens. That’s why our campaign slogan was ‘Let’s reclaim our city.’

“There are basically two ways of looking at Mexico City: One is to see the citizens as the city’s problem; the other is to see the citizens as the solution to the city’s problems.”

Cardenas and his aides say they will create citizens advisory groups throughout the city that will have easy access to the 500 senior officials the new mayor will bring with him. The new team will be competent professionals and trusted aides, the mayor-elect has said, but not his personal pals.

“The very first day he takes office, you will feel a change in this city,” Gonzalez vowed. “The doors of government will swing wide open for the first time in 70 years. When the doors are open, when the administration is open to the people, problems get solved. It’s when you close the doors that people march in the street.”

Last year there were nearly 2,500 street demonstrations here, most of them hours-long marches that paralyzed traffic and sent even more pollutants than usual into the air from the idling vehicles.

Other statistics spell out the extent of the challenges facing Cardenas:

On an average of 325 days a year, air quality is officially deemed unsatisfactory, with dangerous levels of ozone and other pollutants.

The city produces 12,000 tons of garbage a day.

More than 2,500 intersections are officially classified as “dangerous.” Of the 12,517 speed bumps that clog traffic on almost every street, only 5,486 are legal.

An average of 550 crimes are reported each day. And there are believed to be 8,000 prostitutes here.

Cardenas can expect some of his biggest potential conflicts to involve the federal government, which is based in the capital.

About one-third of the city’s $3.5-billion budget comes from the federal government, largely in subsidies comparable to those the government doles out to Mexico’s 31 states. Cardenas, pointing out that the city contributes one-fourth of Mexico’s gross national product, plans to seek larger payments from the federal government, which does not pay the city for the vast space it occupies here.

Both Zedillo and Cardenas--who have met, briefly, only a few times--stressed last week that they will seek a “relationship of cooperation” between the municipal and federal governments that must coexist in the capital.

“But I don’t see any animosity, or that Dr. Zedillo lacks any willingness to work toward collaborating,” Cardenas said. “If everyone’s objective is to improve the city and the living conditions of its inhabitants, I don’t see where we’d have clashes.”

Still, for many citizens here, such heady issues so far in the future are far less important than what happens in the next five months. “What’s to keep the PRI-istas in office now from stealing all the city’s money and leaving Cuauhtemoc with nothing but an empty shell?” asked a newsstand owner, echoing dozens of other residents here last week.

Gonzalez had a ready answer. “I actually think the opposite will happen,” he said.

“Part of Cardenas’ credibility lies in keeping his promise to fight corruption. That means corruption among those who are about to hand over the power of the city government. Because of that, I don’t think there will be any money missing.

“On the contrary,” he said, “from now until December they will do their very best to clean up the house and leave behind a house in order.”