President Becomes Life of the Party

MEXICO CITY — It was an idea so startling it left Mexicans gaping: Before taking office, President Ernesto Zedillo pledged to cut the umbilical cord between the ruling party and the powerful presidency.

No longer would the president use the party as his personal machine to run the country--funneling it government money, dictating its policies and selecting its presidential candidate.

“I believe firmly that democracy demands a healthy distance between my party and the government,” Zedillo declared in a famous campaign speech in August 1994.

But as Mexico gears up for what could be its most competitive elections in decades, Zedillo has changed course, say analysts and officials.

He has not returned to the kind of abuses that tainted past Mexican elections. But through hard-hitting speeches and personnel shifts, he is now leading the electoral charge for the party that has ruled Mexico for nearly 70 years.

Some Mexicans are heaving a sigh of relief, contending that Zedillo needed to assert more control over his Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, in order to govern. But others say the president is backing away from his plans to accelerate democratic change.

“Zedillo has become a more traditional president. He has returned to the attitudes that were common in this system,” said Lorenzo Meyer, a noted historian. But, he added, “this is not a normal system. This is a system that is screaming for change.”

The July 6 elections could be a watershed in modern Mexico. For the first time in nearly seven decades, the PRI risks losing control of the lower house of Congress. It could also lose the powerful mayor’s office of Mexico City, a job filled by presidential appointment until Zedillo relinquished that power.

This week, the new PRI president, Humberto Roque Villanueva, grabbed headlines by warning voters that they will face either dictatorship or fascism if the opposition wins.

Roque Villanueva was installed last month as Zedillo moved to strengthen his control over his party, which had challenged some of his economic reforms and tried to limit the election of foreign-educated “technocrats” like the president. Only two weeks earlier, Zedillo sacked the only opposition politician in his Cabinet--Atty. Gen. Antonio Lozano Gracia--burying an already-weak alliance with the conservative National Action Party.

These were seen as important changes by a president who had vowed to govern through consensus and “absolutely not intervene” in the PRI, allowing it to develop into a more democratic party.

Increasing the perception that Zedillo has turned more partisan, he has given recent speeches slamming his opposition critics and appearing to urge support for the PRI.

“Sometimes it’s necessary to take off our shirts and show our chests much more clearly, so that people know what color our T-shirts are, and how beautiful they are,” the president told a group of Mexican diplomats, using the typically elliptical language of Mexican politics. While officials said Zedillo was referring to defending the country, many complained the speech implied government officials should promote the ruling party.

Zedillo so strongly condemned critics of his political and economic policies in recent speeches that weekly newsmagazine Proceso devoted its cover to what it labeled his “Messiah syndrome.”

While such campaign salvos might not be unusual in many democracies, they caused a stir in Mexico because of the tradition in which the president marshaled all the resources of the government to keep the PRI in power--and critics silent.

Senior officials say Zedillo’s new activism is not a retreat from his promises to promote democracy. He had to stay above the political fray in his first two years in office, they say, as he encouraged all-party talks on how to reform an electoral system that had been riddled with fraud.

Once the reforms passed, it was natural for the president to defend his party, the officials say.

“The idea that the president should get a divorce from his party . . . doesn’t exist anywhere in the world,” said a government official who requested anonymity.

Hoping to maintain his party’s congressional majority, Zedillo will vigorously defend his record in coming months, aides said. Although Mexican presidents do not usually campaign in local races, Zedillo will undoubtedly help select the PRI’s candidates, they added. He had earlier pledged he would not do so.

Zedillo can boast of eliminating past campaign abuses such as funneling government money to the PRI. And under his administration, local elections generally have been fair.

But the president failed, in the end, to win opposition support for his electoral-reform law. Analysts say opposition parties may still question the legitimacy of the midterm elections. With traditional fears of vote fraud still strong, Zedillo’s politicking raises old suspicions about the government tainting the balloting, they say.