Fox: ‘Let’s Be Real Friends, Real Neighbors and Real Partners’

VICENTE FOX, president-elect of Mexico, will be inaugurated Friday. Fox, who heads the National Action Party, or PAN, spoke last week with Nathan Gardels, editor of Global Viewpoint, in Mexico City.

Question: The Mexican writer Carlos Monsivais once said that, because the system doesn’t work in Mexico for the average person, “everyone becomes an opportunist,” skirting the law to make it. For the poorest, the best opportunity is to head north. “Los Angeles is the heart of the Mexican dream,” says Monsivais. Indeed, one-fourth of the population of your home state of Guanajuato works in the United States as migrants.

What will you do to bring the Mexican dream back home?

Answer: To tell you what has built up Mexico’s problems is also to tell you the solution, by fixing those problems.

Mexico’s timing has been way off. We were late to democracy. We had 71 years of one government, one dictatorship. We have been late in making change in rural areas; we kept the ejido [communal landholder group] system for 90 years. We have been late in education; we have the same system created after the revolution in the 1930s. We were late to globalization.

Because of this, we have had no growth in 25 years. We have the same per capita income we had then. For the last 18 years, wages have lost purchasing power.

The end result has been expulsion--people going to look for opportunity somewhere else.

We therefore need an economy that grows at least 7% a year, but is sustainable, because we have been eating up our forests, our oil, our water and polluting the air. Environmental sustainability is key.

Also, growth is not enough. Wealth must be distributed. The way it works now, any growth goes to the few. Today, Mexico has some of the richest people in the world and companies listed on the Fortune 500. But we also have the poorest of the poor, one of the worst income distributions anywhere.

To grow we need to build our human capital, which means a revolution in education, and we will require financial resources, which must come from foreign direct investment, since our own capacity is limited. Our future will depend heavily on this.

Above all, we need to establish security in Mexico, by which I mean establishing the rule of law to eradicate corruption and violence.

So, jobs, education and security. That is the program.

Q: That will bring the dream back to Mexico?

A: Twenty years from now. In the next six years, the length of my term, it will be difficult if not impossible to get that dream back. At least we can set Mexico on the right path.

Q: Though stagnant in recent decades, Mexico has also been politically stable because the ruling PRI (Institutional Revolution Party) incorporated all sectors of society--peasants, labor, business--under its wing after the bloody civil war in the ‘30s, then sealed their loyalty with patronage and corruption.

How will a non-PRI government maintain stability?

A: In the 1930s, the dictatorship was very violent. Later, as you said, it kept control not by violence but by other means.

Now, stability has to come from democracy, sharing power and broadened participation in building up the new system. So you are going to see a president who keeps campaigning, who is very close to people. I need to be close to people in order to maintain that positive energy and sense of hope that came about after my victory on July 2.

As long as we have a people with hope and a government willing to be accountable and responsible, then I can count on a 100-million-member team behind me. Such a team is unbeatable.

Q: The core of the system of corruption in Mexico has been the impunity of the president. Everything followed from that. The key to democratic change is thus ending that impunity.

How will you do that? What will be the ripple effect?

A: How? I would say by my own will and desire. I just want to be a president who is not corrupt. Those who might doubt I would do it on my own can take comfort in the fact that, fortunately, we have a Congress in which nobody has the majority. I don’t have a majority of my party within Congress. So, it has the capacity, through the rule of law, to put this presidency under the Constitution.

Beyond that, we are going to be a very transparent, accountable government. The days of the “imperial presidency” are over.

Q: Very early in his administration, former President Carlos Salinas de Gortari also claimed an end to corruption and put the head of the oil union in jail. Yet corruption got even worse. Why will it be different this time?

A: Since so many considered his election fraudulent, Salinas needed to gain legitimacy. So, he made high-profile moves, like this arrest. But it was more show than anything else. Underneath there was no commitment to accountability. So, he disguised the real nature of his presidency with such theater.

We are not going that way. I am certain that in our first 100 days we will discover many, many irregularities and illegalities. We are prepared for that, which is why I have put together a very strong law and order team in the Cabinet to clean up. Establishing law and order is one of the biggest mandates the Mexican electorate has given to this government.

Q: Texas Gov. George W. Bush and Vice President Al Gore have both rejected your proposal for a “North American common market” until the vast wage differential between Mexico and the U.S. is narrowed.

Bush has said that although he “appreciates your optimistic view of Mexico” converging one day with the U.S., he opposes your idea of a “European style” development fund for Mexico as “bureaucratic” and would leave it up to the market to bring the economies closer together.

Where does this proposal stand? What mechanism will bring about the convergence you envision?

A: First of all, the idea of a North American common market is a long-term view that I am proposing. It is going to be a process, a “NAFTA plus,” walking step by step to a more profound integration over the next 25 years.

I know that maybe the least interested country in doing something like this is the United States. The U.S. feels that, on its own, it has been successful. It has wealth. It has technology. It doesn’t need somebody else. But I think we need to introduce universal, ethical values--solidarity, friendship, equity--into the U.S. relationship with Mexico.

It might seem that the process of integration would only be to our advantage. It will bring investment, knowledge, technology and jobs to Mexico. But I think it is also going to be to the advantage of the U.S. over the long haul. We have many assets that make it worthwhile to unite our interests--from natural resources, such as oil, to people.

Right now the U.S. badly needs workers in order to grow. This is now accepted by labor unions, government, companies and investors, and even by Alan Greenspan [chairman of the Federal Reserve]. He attributes the ability of the U.S. to grow at 5% a year with very low inflation to migration.

Over the long term, we need consistency in this U.S.-Mexico relationship. If you open the borders for products, services and capital, as we have under NAFTA [the North American Free Trade Agreement], you must open it up for the free flow of people.

This can never happen if we don’t narrow the income gap between our two economies. Our proposal then is to work on an “economic convergence” program to narrow that gap, first by having the same interest rates, inflation rate and the same level of government deficits.

If we can attain these same economic fundamentals, then the differences will start narrowing.

To get to that stage, we need investment resources. It is easy for the U.S. to say “get the resources on the market” because [it] can do it. But, for Mexico or other developing countries, that is very difficult. So, although we can get part of what we need from the market, we also must get part of what we need from foreign direct investment, part from the World Bank and the Inter-American [Development] Bank.

What we have proposed now is also to get funds from NADBank [North American Development Bank, established in association with NAFTA]. It is a banking institution that could play the role of a development fund, and not only for Mexico but for the U.S., too, along the border, to modernize customs or for ecological protection. NADBank can also invest in developing infrastructure corridors--highways, railroads, electricity grids, airports--that run down from Canada, through the United States and into Mexico.

Now, of course, in the U.S. it is very difficult to use the European example. [Americans] don’t have it clear, they think it is a failure. But, to me, the process of building up the European community is an inspiration. It can show us how to go about integrating the U.S., Canada and Mexico.

If the new U.S. president has any other idea, I certainly want to hear it. Every day the U.S. complains or Mexico complains about the usual problems of drugs, migration or trade. Nobody has solved them. I’m proposing that we take the bull by the horns and solve these problems once and for all through a larger relationship. I don’t want to waste the six years of my presidency talking about the same old issues and coming no closer to a solution than all the former presidents.

Q: Although you are proposing a North American common market, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has advanced another model: Bolivarian anti-globalization, which seeks to unite Latin America against North American neo-liberalism.

In that perspective, aren’t you executing a historic shift of orientation for Mexico away from Latin America toward the U.S.?

A: Well, my proposal is 180 degrees away from Chavez’s, though I also have the Bolivarian dream of an American continent that is united and integrated. We are not only married to the United States and NAFTA, we also have a free trade agreement with Europe. And with Singapore. We also have trade agreements with Central America, and we are negotiating one with Mercosur [Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Paraguay and Uruguay]. Mexico can thus work in either direction.

I dream of putting together the four large economies of Latin America--Brazil, Argentina, Chile and Mexico. Together, these would be four big economic machines pulling all of Latin American upward.

In the 20th century, Latin America was a loser. But, learning from our mistakes, with the new democracies we now have, with the new spirit, Latin America and Mexico will be winners in the 21st century.

Q: During the decades of Mexico’s anti-clericalism and anti-gringoism, its woes were blamed on being “so far from God, so close to the United States.”

Under Fox, a practicing Catholic proposing integration with the U.S., might we say the solution to Mexico’s woes is being “so close to God, so close to the United States”?

A: I feel like that. It is a privilege to be a neighbor of the United States. It is a strategic advantage for Mexico. Of course, we must keep our culture and values. At the same time, we can work together much more closely. With respect to the U.S., these words are key to me: Let’s be real friends, real neighbors and real partners. Then we will all gain.