Mexican Opposition Savors Success in Upstaging Zedillo During Speech : Politics: PAN leader’s critique of president spurs debate over whether the move was an opportunistic squabble or a shift toward greater democracy.

Mexico’s opposition parties are boisterously proclaiming a huge victory this week over outsized presidential power, a cornerstone of political life in Mexico for more than a century.

The hero, at least in the opposition’s eyes, is Carlos Medina Plascencia. The leader of the center-right National Action Party, or PAN, Medina presides over the lower house, the Chamber of Deputies.

Medina chaired the joint session of Congress on Wednesday night at which President Ernesto Zedillo gave his annual state of the union address. As is customary, the president recited a litany of government achievements--in education, health and economic growth--amid occasional heckles from opposition legislators.

And then, in front of a national television audience, Medina responded on behalf of Congress with a blistering critique of Zedillo’s view of the nation’s well-being. Stunned legislators from Zedillo’s ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, tried to shout Medina down, but the heart of his message reached the nation.

One opinion poll the next day gave his speech higher marks than Zedillo’s address. Certainly it was the boldest sign of congressional assertiveness since the opposition parties won a majority in the lower chamber in July 1997, the first time since 1929 that the PRI found itself in the minority.

Enraged by Medina’s daring speech, the PRI tried unsuccessfully Thursday to have him removed as the chamber’s speaker. PRI leaders sullenly berated him for impolite and partisan behavior in what is meant to be a decorous occasion, with only a “concise and concrete” response from the presiding member.

Mexican politicians and commentators have fiercely debated Medina’s challenge, assessing whether it was just an opportunistic party squabble or a major shift toward greater balance between the executive and legislative branches of power.

“We have changed the political norms with the goal of leaving behind the vestiges of the imperial presidency and to revive the republican spirit of the constitution of 1917,” Medina wrote in a commentary Friday.

“The society is taking part in the dismantling of a form of conduct in which dissent was only permitted when it didn’t raise the fundamental risk implicit in democracy of power alternating between parties.”

The dispute brought together the opposition parties just as they are trying to form an alliance to challenge the PRI in next year’s presidential election, hoping to end the PRI’s 70 years of presidential control.

Porfirio Munoz Ledo, a leader of the center-left Democratic Revolution Party, or PRD, described Wednesday as “a critical day in the history of the national political process. I believe that presidencialismo has ended in Mexico.”

Some worried, however, that the televised catcalls and quarreling during the speech would end up further undermining the already tarnished image of Mexican politicians, especially given the nation’s deep cultural respect for decorum.

As Rafael Segovia, a political scientist at the Colegio de Mexico, declared: “The political class committed suicide yesterday. There is no Mexican who witnessed the savagery, the rudeness and the brutality of the parties there who can identify with them nor feel represented by those beasts.”

But economist Carlos Elizondo Mayer-Serra welcomed the strident exchanges, saying that discussion and harsh criticism “shouldn’t worry anybody in a plural and democratic country. What a pleasure to have left behind the land of endless elegies to the powerful and to be able to air differences on public issues.”

The clash between the PRI and the PAN could give a boost to the opposition’s alliance negotiations. Over the past two years, when the PRI has most needed an ally in Congress, the PAN has usually come through with crucial support for the ruling party. Medina’s forceful rebuke to Zedillo now appears to put the PAN solidly in the opposition camp.

Zedillo appeared to be as annoyed at his own party’s heckling as at Medina’s critical remarks. The president has himself contributed during his five years in office to moving Mexico away from the regal presidency that took root at least as long ago as the rule of Porfirio Diaz from 1884 to 1910.

Zedillo spokesman David Najera said on the day of the speech: “This is a country used to very strong personalities of its presidents. The presidency and the president were always the same thing. Zedillo has strengthened the institution of the presidency rather than the image of the president himself.”

But the dramatic intervention of Medina brought into closer balance the weight of the legislative branch, largely a rubber-stamp for the PRI-led executive until two years ago. Medina noted that he also had challenged the demeanor of the PRI itself.

In an interview, Medina said the PRI leaders “are not used to this treatment. They are used to praise, to submissiveness, to adulation. So when one raises criticisms in the face of the president, they don’t tolerate it. It seems like the old Mexico of years ago.

“What we now must do is build bridges to travel from the old Mexico to the new Mexico,” he added, “where we can speak, with much respect, to anyone we want, and in turn we can be held accountable by society.”