PRI Splintering After Loss of Mexico’s Helm

The world’s longest-ruling party grappled with its most acute crisis Wednesday as it tried to avoid exploding into warring factions after its defeat in Mexico’s presidential race.

As a leadership battle erupted in the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, it was clear that the party was already trying to shake off its 71-year role as a tool of the president. But it wasn’t clear what kind of party would emerge.

The PRI leader, Dulce Maria Sauri, spent Wednesday in negotiations on a new committee that will oversee the party’s transformation. The PRI had announced the committee late Tuesday, after a rebellion by party stalwarts. They had balked at Sauri’s resignation and the appointment of her successor by presidential fiat.

The leadership fight wasn’t the only sign of rebellion. Furious party officials abandoned their traditional subservience to blast President Ernesto Zedillo and his foreign-educated, free-market team, who had pushed the party to allow fair elections.

“They called themselves party militants, but they weren’t,” fumed Jose Murat, the governor of Oaxaca state and a leader of an influential group of PRI traditionalists. “They weren’t committed. They didn’t accept the party’s mystique, its ideology, its principles of organization. . . . They were there for their own interests.

“I am referring to the technocrats and to many militants who got good jobs but weren’t committed to the political organization we belong to,” he added in the interview Wednesday with a Mexico City radio program.

PRI officials tried to assure anxious members that the party would pull through the crisis caused by the defeat of its presidential candidate by Vicente Fox of the center-right National Action Party, or PAN.

But many analysts weren’t sure that the party would survive.

“It’s an authentic state party. What happens with state parties when they lose power? They fall apart,” said political scientist Jose Antonio Crespo.

“Its center of cohesion and identity was the presidency. Decisions came from on high. Your biggest incentive to belong to the PRI was to have power. . . . What happened in Eastern Europe will happen here,” he added, referring to the demise of communism there.

The PRI is expected to name a new, interim leader in coming days, and plan an assembly by fall that could thoroughly shake up the party that dominated Mexico in the 20th century. The assembly could discuss everything from a new philosophy to a new party name.

Party leaders on Wednesday insisted that the PRI was still a powerful force, with two-thirds of the nation’s governorships and the No. 2 faction in the lower house of Congress. In addition, near-complete vote returns indicated that the PRI would squeak by the PAN at the last minute to register the biggest group in the Senate. The PRI, however, was denied a majority for the first time.

“We are the alternative to power at this moment. That’s what we will maintain,” said Emilio Gamboa, a senior PRI official, in another Mexico City radio interview.

But the reconstruction of the PRI seemed a daunting task.

The party has changed ideology as often as Imelda Marcos changes shoes. Over the years, it has gone from embracing a strong state role in the economy to advocating mass privatization. It long regarded Washington as a virtual enemy; now it is bound to the United States in the North American Free Trade Agreement.

To many party members, however, ideology was never the issue. Rather, the PRI was the channel through which government benefits flowed: jobs for bureaucrats, pay raises for union workers, seeds for farmers.

Such government largess had been diminishing in recent years as pro-free market leaders sought to modernize the economy and make the government more distinct from the party.

But losing the presidency and control of Congress now poses a dire threat to the PRI’s patronage machine.

“What unified the PRI was power. It wasn’t an ideology of center, left or right. It was a series of vague ideas,” said Jesus Silva-Herzog Marquez, a political scientist. “Above all, it was a staircase to climb to power. If you lose this, there will be many migrations.”

Some were already evident.

As Fox left an interview Tuesday, he was approached by a union leader. “We have come to put ourselves at your service,” said the man, according to Mexican media reports. “We want to work with you.”

Fox thanked the man, whom he didn’t seem to recognize, the media reports said. But those around Fox gaped: This was none other than Victor Flores, a hard-core PRI leader who heads the party-affiliated railroad workers union.

Apprised of the man’s identity, Fox raised his eyebrows and chortled.

The PRI’s crisis exploded openly Tuesday. Sauri had submitted her resignation as PRI leader, and members of the party’s National Political Council were summoned to a meeting to ratify her successor.

In the past, the council generally rubber-stamped a name submitted by the president. This time, it was different.

In speeches at meetings that were quickly filtered to the media, PRI members issued scalding denunciations of the president.

“Zedillo has lost his ability to lead. He has stopped being the PRI’s moral leader,” thundered Manuel Bartlett, a notorious party hard-liner, according to media accounts.

Some council members said Zedillo had selected Jesus Murillo Karam, the former deputy interior minister, as the new PRI leader. But council members balked at even meeting, saying they would not vote on a leader selected by the president. The council meeting was postponed twice and finally called off as Sauri announced that she would stay on while a transition commission was formed.

With PRI members criticizing Zedillo both inside and outside of meetings, the party had entered uncharted waters.

“They’ve never managed to criticize him in public. They’re going to convert Zedillo into the sacrificial lamb,” said political scientist Alfonso Zarate.

Javier Trevino, a top PRI official linked to Zedillo’s reform wing, insisted that such criticisms of the president weren’t shared by many in the party.

“Many of us think the electorate sent an important message on Sunday. That message was that the party was unable, in the past and today, to reach different segments of the electorate, particularly young voters, people between 18 and 35,” he said. “The party was unable to reach the middle class of Mexico.”

“It’s much more important to analyze what really happened in the last election,” he added. “I think it’s a mistake trying to blame one person because of the result.”

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An L.A. man apparently will be the first person living abroad to serve in Mexico’s Congress. B3