Zedillo Says Stability Will Be His Legacy

President Ernesto Zedillo, basking in his best poll ratings, vowed Wednesday in his last major annual policy address to hand his successor a far more stable country than the crisis-ridden Mexico he inherited in 1994.

In his fifth state of the union speech to the Mexican Congress, Zedillo highlighted measures his government has taken to avoid the kind of end-of-term economic chaos next year that has marked every presidential transition in this nation since 1976.

“We will continue to employ the tools of economic policy with an unwavering sense of responsibility and discipline,” Zedillo declared, “and we will also make the economic traumas of previous changes of administration a thing of the past.”

Zedillo, a Yale-trained economist, spoke against a backdrop of steadily improving economic health in Mexico. The annual growth rate is expected to exceed 3% this year for the fourth year in a row.

Addressing both houses of Congress, he set an even more ambitious goal for the 2000 election year: economic growth of 5% and annual inflation below 10%. The rate of inflation is expected to be 14% this year and was a horrific 52% in 1995, Zedillo’s first full year in office.

Despite improving economic fundamentals, Zedillo has failed to resolve nagging social conflicts and rising crime. In addition, unprecedented political competition is adding to public uncertainty about the prospects for a peaceful presidential ballot next July--as well as a smooth hand-over of power in December 2000.

Zedillo, who will deliver one more annual policy address next year as a lame-duck president, acknowledged public outrage over crime, saying: “Our citizens have just cause to feel aggrieved.”

He pledged greater spending and structural reforms to fix police and justice systems that he called “obsolete [and] run through with crime and corruption.”

Zedillo, a reluctant candidate in 1994 who was thrust into the role after his party’s original nominee, Luis Donaldo Colosio, was assassinated, has won applause even from critics for solidifying democratic institutions in a country renowned for authoritarian presidents.

Zedillo broke with precedent this year within his long-ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party by declining to anoint his successor, instead sending the party into a first primary election this November to pick the nominee.

Even Wednesday’s speech was an example of the changes he has quietly fostered. Soon after taking office, Zedillo declared that the day of the annual Informe will no longer be a full holiday, and most businesses were open Wednesday. Compared with former President Jose Lopez Portillo’s six-hour epic addresses in the late 1970s, Zedillo stripped down his speech to a perfunctory 85 minutes.

Even the periodic outbursts of heckling by opposition legislators were relatively subdued, as were the dozen or so interruptions for applause. Several leftist legislators held up placards chiding the ruling party’s policies or shouted protests, prompting presiding Chairman Carlos Medina Plascencia of the right-leaning National Action Party to warn the hecklers to stop interrupting.

But when Medina responded to the president on behalf of Congress with sharp criticism of Zedillo, the PRI legislators peppered Medina with insults and forced him to break off his address before finishing. Zedillo, whose speech had emphasized tolerance and respect for others’ opinions, glared glumly at his own rowdy party members as they drowned out Medina.

The combined opposition parties won a congressional majority over the PRI in July 1997, denying the ruling party control over the legislature for the first time since 1929. Those parties are now in negotiations to form an electoral alliance to challenge the PRI for the presidency next year.

Earlier Wednesday, a quarterly opinion poll by the daily newspaper Reforma showed Zedillo’s approval rating at 66%, up from a low of 31% in December 1995 amid a deep recession resulting from a bungled devaluation of the peso 18 days after he took office. The poll also showed him with higher ratings for honesty and economic management than he had previously.

Still, 66% of respondents in the poll said they expected an economic crisis next year.

And the free-market-based recovery hasn’t shielded Zedillo from criticism over a sharp plunge in buying power felt by ordinary Mexicans.

Zedillo also has been attacked for failing to provide clear leadership on some issues.

He has not found a solution to the stalemated Maya Indian uprising in the poor southern state of Chiapas.

And he has been embarrassed by his government’s inability to reduce rampant crime.

Maria Amparo Casar, a political scientist at the Center for Economic Teaching and Investigation, highlighted two key characteristics of Zedillo’s five years in office: “his growing lack of control and leadership over the governing party, and his unwillingness to establish compromises and political alliances in various areas, including Congress, Chiapas, the unions and more recently UNAM,” the latter a reference to the National Autonomous University here, which has been locked in a bitter strike for more than four months.

But Zedillo’s main legacy, if he can achieve it, will be an uneventful presidential election next July 2 and a peaceful, stable democratic hand-over to his successor, even if--for the first time in seven decades--the winner is not from his party.