The Salinas Ending Has Not Been Written

Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo is celebrating a political victory. Four years after he ordered the imprisonment of Raul Salinas, the “uncomfortable brother” of former President Carlos Salinas, a Mexican court has found Raul guilty of murder.

Zedillo’s triumph, however, is both aa step forward and a step backward for Mexico, its judicial system and the political stability of a country that frequently appears to be bordering on chaos. Raul Salinas’ ultimate demise suggests that impunity will not be tolerated and that even the powerful can be raked over the coals. But the mishaps and irregularities of the trial reveal that true justice remains a scarce commodity. The verdict proves that the Raul Salinas affair was fueled by politics, was tried as a political case and that he will remain imprisoned simply because Zedillo wants it so.

Raul Salinas deserves to remain behind bars. He embodies the worst excesses of a political class that governed above and beyond the law: power-hungry, corruption-prone, dissolute.

But the Mexican justice system has been ill-served by a trial that began as a tragedy, evolved into a Mayan thriller and degenerated into a farce. Witnesses were tortured, evidence was planted, prosecutors were indicted as accomplices and the case became an embarrassment for the accusers and the accused. Instead of redeeming its reputation by convicting Raul Salinas, the embattled Mexican judicial system has further eroded it.

If Zedillo believes that the rule of law has been strengthened by this latest twist, he is mistaken. Mexicans are overjoyed by what they see: the crucifixion of a former untouchable, but seeing is not believing. Four years of judicial bungling have left Mexicans more cynical about justice and less confident about its impartial enforcement.

By ordering a guilty verdict despite a weak case, Zedillo has acted as arbitrarily and imperiously as any of his predecessors. The Mexican president has proved, once again, that he is willing to bend the law to suit his political purposes. Zedillo may publicly espouse the separation of powers but seems willing to cross the divide and pressure the judiciary for tailor-made results if necessary.

Zedillo’s political capital among the population at large has risen; Raul Salinas is Mexico’s favorite villain. But the Mexican president has added fuel to another dangerous fire. Ninety million Mexicans are cheering the outcome of the trial, but one of them is not. Former President Carlos Salinas did not leave office a hero; instead he skulked out of the country as a traitor. In the damp of Dublin, alone and ostracized in self-imposed political exile, the former president is deciding his next step down the long path of revenge. The verdict must be a hard blow to a man whose sole purpose is to regain his foothold in history as the great Mexican modernizer, a man who remains a political force.

Zedillo has chosen the path of continued confrontation with his predecessor, and he may pay a very steep price for his bravado. In 2000, Zedillo will relinquish the presidential chair, after what is expected to be a hotly contested election. He will become a private citizen, devoid of power, stripped of protection. He will be at the mercy of a fallen but still influential enemy whose hatred has simmered for six years.

In recent months, Carlos Salinas has devoted his energy to a public relations campaign designed to rebuild his shattered reputation. However, he cannot clean his name or even return to Mexico as long as his brother remains in jail. In order to have a country to grow old in, he needs a presidential pardon, a release, an acknowledgment that his brother’s case was a carefully constructed political charade. The verdict has precluded the possibility of that happening during the Zedillo term.

Thus, as the 2000 election approaches, Carlos Salinas will undoubtedly try to influence its outcome in order to propel to power a politician he can trust and make peace with. His handiwork--campaign funding, information, coalition-building behind the scenes--may even strengthen the presidential bids of hard-liners of the ruling Revolutionary Institutional Party, such as the current governor of Puebla, Manuel Bartlett. The PRI may discover that its best ally lies in Dublin, not in the presidential residence.

By unleashing his wrath against a former president’s brother, Zedillo broke an unwritten rule that had governed since the inception of the PRI almost 70 years ago. Carlos Salinas will be setting his sights on him and his family, choosing his targets and oiling his guns. Zedillo will have to run for political protection, and he may find it only in the arms of an opposition politician, be it Cuauhtemoc Cardenas from the left-leaning Party of the Democratic Revolution or Vicente Fox of the National Action Party.

Fear of Carlos Salinas may turn Zedillo into more of a full-fledged democrat than he has been up to now; Zedillo will have a stake in sacrificing his party and passing the torch to another Salinas-hater.

Raul Salinas may remain in jail for the next 50 years, or he may ultimately be set free, but the final outcome will not be determined by facts, evidence or legal procedures. Raul Salinas’ fate will depend on whether or not, and on what terms Ernesto Zedillo and Carlos Salinas remain at each other’s throats. In the meantime, the reputation of the Mexican judiciary and the politics of the presidential succession will be subjected to the ebbs and flows of a personal feud.

As the Raul Salinas case proves, British essayist Samuel Johnson was right when he argued that politics is truly about who hates whom.