Mexico Too Close For Comfort

By Jill Smolowe

Five hours after the 54,641 polling stations closed and three hours after the first results were expected, the Interior Ministry in Mexico City announced that its new computerized tabulating system was not working. Despite the absence of official returns, the three major campaign organizations had plenty to say last week. The ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (P.R.I.) proclaimed that its candidate, Carlos Salinas de Gortari, had won a "crushing, indisputable, unobjectionable victory" in his race for the presidency. The coalition of leftist parties backing Cuauhtemoc Cardenas claimed that its man was ahead with 39% of the vote, and charged that the P.R.I. had faked the computer breakdown in order to steal enough votes to offset the actual returns. Manuel Clouthier, candidate of the rightist National Action Party, called last Wednesday's vote "the most barbaric fraud in the history of Mexico."

Even without any official returns, there was little question that one way or another, the P.R.I. would emerge on top. But never had a Mexican presidential election been quite so contentious or fraught with emotion. Since the P.R.I. first came to power in 1929, it has won every presidential election with at least 70% of the vote. Yet even the P.R.I.'s own early returns last week suggested a shattering rejection by voters tired of the party's monolithic rule and its inability to solve Mexico's economic problems. While some party regulars described the election as a triumph, the winning candidate was more conciliatory. "We've reached the end of having, in effect, a single party," Salinas declared on Thursday. "We've entered a new political era with a | majority party and a very intensely competitive opposition."

Salinas' admission reflected the depth of the P.R.I.'s post-election anxiety; in fact, he had spent a sleepless election night arguing with advisers over how to handle the disaster in progress. By Friday, those close to Salinas were saying that when official returns were released by the Federal Electoral Commission on Sunday, they would show Salinas triumphant with between 49% and 54% of the vote. Significantly, they conceded that Cardenas had won in several P.R.I. strongholds, including Mexico City. They also said that while the P.R.I. will retain a majority of seats in the Senate and Chamber of Deputies, it could fall short of the two-thirds plurality required to make constitutional changes, a mechanism routinely used to create laws. Privately, Salinas aides say their boss plans to use the dramatically lower turnout to drive home to the party old guard the need for change.

Before the voting stations had even closed, charges of fraud swept through several of Mexico's 31 states. By midnight, Cardenas and Clouthier had issued a statement accusing the government of rigging the elections. Citing instances of stuffed ballot boxes, altered registration lists and multiple voting, they complained that such practices "seriously affect the cleanliness of today's balloting," and hinted that they might seek to have the results voided and a new election called.

Although the outcome of the vote was never seriously in question, opponents on both the left and the right challenged the ruling party. By denouncing the P.R.I.'s authoritarian ways and its well-established reputation for election fraud, the opposition forced Salinas into a corner. Political commentators warned that the ruling party had to win by a margin large enough to establish Salinas' authority and credibility but not so large as to trigger charges of fraud. As confusion over the vote mounted, it became evident that while the P.R.I. had gained the presidency, the days of one-party rule were numbered. "This country," predicted Mexican Political Scientist Jorge Castaneda, "will never be the same."

Much of the credit for the turnabout goes to Cardenas. A former P.R.I. governor, he was expelled from the party last fall after he challenged the process of selecting the presidential candidate. Embraced by four leftist parties, Cardenas, 54, the son of a revered former President, began touring the countryside in a donated van. As he spread his heavily nationalist message ) and hinted that he favored suspending interest payments on Mexico's $103 billion foreign debt, peasants, students, intellectuals and members of the middle class rallied to his banner.

Four days before the vote, one of Cardenas' strategists, Francisco Javier Ovando Hernandez, was shot to death in his car in the capital, along with Ovando's private secretary, Roman Gil Heraldez. Cardenas promptly denounced the killings as political assassinations. In an angry letter to President Miguel de la Madrid Hurtado, Cardenas warned that the "responsibility will be yours" for any acts of terrorism against the opposition. If the tragedy enhanced the messianic aura that surrounded Cardenas' campaign, it amounted to a disaster for Salinas. Though even Cardenas did not directly accuse the P.R.I. of complicity in the crime, many Mexicans expressed skepticism about the police statement that Ovando had probably been gunned down by criminals he had prosecuted while attorney general in the state of Michoacan.

Salinas, a 40-year-old economist with a doctoral degree from Harvard, campaigned on a platform of reform, promising political and economic modernization. As he stumped the country for eight months, he sounded the themes of pluralism and democracy, staking his reputation on a clean contest. While no candidate charged that Salinas condoned or abetted any of last week's purported irregularities, the allegations threw into question his ability to manage the P.R.I.'s apparatus.

The charges quickly became the centerpiece of the postelectoral furor. In Agualeguas, a small town just 25 miles south of the Rio Grande, P.R.I. officials claimed 3,379 votes for Salinas, but reporters from the Monterrey- based newspaper El Norte who had been monitoring the balloting claimed that only one-third that number had turned out to vote. In the barrio of Colonia Pancho Villa, a brawl broke out after the polls closed when P.R.I. officials physically ejected opposition representatives who were supposed to observe the ballot count. Elsewhere, there were charges that "galloping brigades" of up to 80 people had charged polling stations to stuff ballot boxes. Some poll watchers claimed that the indelible ink applied to each voter's right thumb was washable, allowing for multiple voting.

When he begins his six-year term on Dec. 1, Salinas will have to navigate carefully between the demands of the P.R.I. old guard to maintain the party's hegemony and his own vision of a more democratic future. Throughout the campaign, there were indications that many P.R.I. stalwarts intended to fight any attempt by Salinas to open the system to a vigorous exchange of ideas. Much like the Soviet Union's Mikhail Gorbachev, Salinas knows that political liberalization is imperative if he is to succeed in restructuring a debt- ridden, slow-growth economy. But before Salinas can begin, he will have to convince Mexicans that the job is rightfully his.

With reporting by Andrea Dabrowski and John Moody/Mexico City