Path: bloom-picayune.mit.edu!snorkelwacker.mit.edu!americast.com!americast.com!americast-post Newsgroups: americast.twt.news From: americast-post@AmeriCast.Com Organization: American Cybercasting Approved: americast-post@AmeriCast.com Subject: Salinas adopts hard line to keep party in power Date: Tue, 17 Nov 92 15:07:56 EST Message-ID: \SE A;NEWS ANALYSIS \SS (WS) \HD Salinas adopts hard line to keep party in power \BY Martin Langfield \CR REUTERS NEWS AGENCY \DT MEXICO CITY MEXICO CITY - Crushing victories for Mexico's ruling party in recent regional elections mark a hardening of government policy toward the opposition and a new stage in the race to succeed President Carlos Salinas de Gortari, political analysts say. After relenting several times over opposition protests of electoral fraud in the last two years, Mr. Salinas is unlikely to bend further and risk undermining his governing Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI)'s grip on power, they say. Instead, he is expected to build the best possible base for his hand-picked successor in the 1994 presidential elections by upholding PRI victories and ensuring that the party, in power since 1929, continues to rule Mexico through the year 2000. "The presidential succession will dominate every political event in the country from now on," political analyst Sergio Sarmiento said. "Salinas will want to have an election considered clean . . . but wants to make sure whoever is the PRI's candidate in '94 will not go down to defeat," he said. The race to succeed Salinas and win the PRI nomination for presidential candidate is a silent one, with anyone in the running bound not to breathe a word of his aspirations in public. Although the formal mechanisms by which the party announces its choice may vary each time, the final choice is by tradition the president's - a faculty known as the "Dedazo," the "Big Finger," with which the president taps his successor. Commentators and analysts say the leading candidates include Finance Minister Pedro Aspe Armella, Mexico City Mayor Manuel Camacho Solis and Social Development Minister Luis Donaldo Colosio. Education Minister Ernesto Zedillo is a dark horse in fourth place. Before Mr. Salinas came to power in fraud-tinged 1988 elections pledging a more open political system, the PRI never had given up a state governorship to the opposition. Since then, the conservative National Action Party (PAN) has captured three governorships out of 31 nationwide, including Baja California and Chihuahua along the U.S. border, where PAN is strongest. The third is in the central state of Guanajuato, where a PAN interim governor was named last year to mollify fierce protests of a ruling party governor thought to have won his post dishonestly. Last month, the PRI governor of Michoacan, elected in July, stepped down after opposition protests of fraud, leaving the way open for a new vote. Because of the vast powers of the president, Mr. Salinas was assumed to be a factor in the governor's decision. But political analysts, who must look for signs and symbols because of the closed nature of the presidential campaign process, said the recent elections signaled an end - at least for now - of political accommodation by the PRI and Mr. Salinas. The ruling party easily won gubernatorial elections Nov. 8 in Puebla, Sinaloa and Tamaulipas, the last a border state thought to be a PAN stronghold, and appeared headed for a big victory Sunday in Tlaxcala, a small state just east of Mexico City. Even though angry opposition supporters staged violent protests in Tamaulipas against alleged electoral fraud, the government gave no indication it was thinking of reversing the results. On the contrary, it launched legal action against the alleged instigators of the violence. "The process of national democratization has been halted and now everything is geared toward the presidential succession," commentator Francisco Jose Paoli wrote in the La Jornada newspaper. This article is copyright 1992 The Washington Times. Redistribution to other sites is not permitted except by arrangement with American Cybercasting Corporation. For more information, send-email to usa@AmeriCast.COM