Effort to Unite Against Mexico’s Ruling PRI Fails

Negotiations to unite Mexico’s fractious opposition parties behind a single candidate collapsed Tuesday night, just hours after leftist icon Cuauhtemoc Cardenas stepped down as mayor of Mexico City to launch his third bid for the presidency.

A last-ditch effort to get the two major opposition parties to agree on a nomination method for the alliance fell apart as the center-right National Action Party, or PAN, declared that the proposed solution would invite “contradictions, chaos and failure.”

Members of a committee of civic leaders who had tried to strike a deal between the two major opposition parties were visibly angry over the breakdown of talks after a final six-hour session in a Mexico City suburb.

For several months, the PAN had negotiated with Cardenas’ Democratic Revolution Party, or PRD, seeking to forge an alliance that could successfully challenge the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, which has controlled Mexico for seven decades. Now the PAN and the PRD will field separate candidates--Vicente Fox and Cardenas, respectively. The three-way race will make it easier for the ruling PRI to maintain its grip on power.

Cardenas sent his resignation to the city assembly as efforts to create an opposition alliance faltered.

“A cycle has ended,” said Cardenas, who made history in 1997 by becoming the first opposition politician to wrest the powerful mayor’s post from the PRI.

The negotiations involving the two major and several minor opposition parties were frustrated by ideological differences and a rivalry between two candidates: Cardenas on the left and Fox on the right.

In a last-ditch effort to save the alliance, a blue-ribbon panel named by the parties last week proposed holding a primary to choose a common standard-bearer. But the PAN vetoed the idea, arguing that preparations for such a primary and safeguards against fraud were insufficient.

“In no country on Earth are 55 million people asked to vote in an election without a voter list, without a law, without authority and without judges,” said a top PAN official, Diego Fernandez de Cevallos, before the talks resumed Tuesday. “We don’t agree, period. We’re not going to play.”

Ironically, the ruling PRI--long an authoritarian institution--is the only party so far planning a competitive presidential primary.

On Monday, Cardenas expressed confidence that he could win the presidential race, even without a broad alliance. He brushed aside a radio interviewer’s remark that a recent survey indicated only 30% of Mexico City residents would choose him for president. Other polls have shown Cardenas running a distant third.

“I am optimistic because of the response I’ve received on trips I’ve made to different parts of the country,” Cardenas said in the interview with radio journalist Ricardo Rocha. “If I have 30% nine months from election day, well, any party in any part of the world would be happy with that.”

Cardenas, 65, swept into the mayor’s office in a July 1997 election with nearly 50% of the vote, crushing two rivals and capping a decade-long personal crusade against the PRI. He was the city’s first democratically elected mayor; his predecessors were appointed by the president.

When Cardenas took office in December 1997, a poll found that 71% thought he would bring improvements to the crime-ridden, smog-cloaked city of 8.5 million, the core of one of the world’s biggest metropolitan areas.

But the most recent poll on Cardenas’ performance, done by the Mexico City daily newspaper Reforma, found that 53% disapproved.

Analysts say Cardenas had fed unrealistic expectations of change in a city that would try the best of reformers.

“The Cardenas government wasn’t a bad government. But it didn’t respond to the expectations that were generated by the first democratic government in Mexico City,” said Alfonso Zarate, editor of a political newsletter here.

Other analysts note that the Cardenas government suffered from poor organization, political infighting and a failure to communicate.

“The central problem is that he didn’t come to the city with an idea of what was the job to do,” said Sen. Adolfo Aguilar Zinser, a former aide who has become a critic.

Cardenas’ allies say the mayor was hurt by the country’s pro-PRI television networks, hostile local PRI-controlled unions and the limits on the power of the capital’s government. They note, for example, that Cardenas had to seek federal approval--often denied--before the city could take out certain loans.

Despite the hurdles, Cardenas distinguished himself by fighting to clean up the famously corrupt city government, his defenders say.

The city government recently began an advertising blitz, featuring Cardenas, emphasizing its accomplishments in slowing the soaring rate of crime and improving the city’s infrastructure.

The son of a beloved former president, Cardenas has been a comeback kid for much of his career. In the 1988 presidential elections, he stunned the PRI by nearly upsetting its candidate. Many Mexicans believe that Cardenas was the real winner and that the PRI triumphed only through fraud.

Cardenas was trounced in the 1994 presidential race but bounced back three years later to win the mayoralty. Months before that election, he had only a lukewarm standing in the polls.

However, analysts note that in previous races, Cardenas’ success rested in part on the strength or weakness of his rivals. This time, he will be measured not only against their performance, but his own.

The irony, said Aguilar Zinser, is that Cardenas resurrected his career by winning Mexico City--but damaged his presidential aspirations by trying to run the problematic federal district.

The city legislature is expected to name Cardenas’ No. 2 official, Rosario Robles, to serve the rest of his term, which ends in mid-2000. Robles will be the first female mayor of the capital.

Researcher Jose Diaz Briseno contributed to this report.