The Last Gasps of the Dinosaurs? : Mexico’s Salinas must continue to fight ballot fraud

The results of another disputed state election have been tossed out in Mexico. That removes one of the few blots on the otherwise increasingly impressive record of President Carlos Salinas de Gortari’s government--but also indicates just how much work is left before Mexico’s political progress matches its economic achievements.

ELECTION QUESTION: Last week the candidate supported by Salinas’ Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) in the state of San Luis Potosi, Fausto Zapata, resigned from office just two weeks after being sworn in. Zapata was one of two PRI gubernatorial candidates in Aug. 18 congressional and state elections who “won” amid apparently valid allegations of ballot fraud. And Zapata’s political foes were not about to let him, or Salinas, forget that.

Zapata’s chief rival, a 77-year-old doctor who ran as an independent, began a 260-mile-long personal protest march to Mexico City. His arrival in the Mexican capital was to coincide with Salinas’ Nov. 1 state of the nation speech and was sure to have distracted public attention from it.

But it was another protest that brought Zapata down, one involving women who blocked entrances to the San Luis Potosi state house so he could not get to the governor’s office. When Zapata and his supporters tried to push through, a scuffle ensued in which several women were injured.

The embarrassing publicity that resulted apparently persuaded Salinas to abandon Zapata. The new governor traveled to Mexico City last week, then returned to San Luis Potosi to announce that he was resigning to make way for a “political solution” that would allow “peaceful coexistence” between the PRI and opposition parties.

Previously, the governor-elect in the neighboring state of Guanajuato, Ramon Aguirre, gave up without even taking the oath of office amid fraud allegations. Interim governors must now call new elections.

In August’s controversial elections there were precincts where the PRI candidate got more votes than there were people registered. Such patently obvious fraud would be funny if it didn’t reflect a serious problem: the refusal of some PRI political operatives to respect democracy.

POLITICAL DINOSAURS: Salinas and the other progressive young Mexicans around him privately admit this problem exists. They even call the old PRI politicos who refuse to give up power “dinosaurs.” But the embarrassing turmoil in Guanajuato and San Luis Potosi suggests the time is long past when talking about political problems is enough.

Salinas must now crack down on electoral fraud as firmly as he has on the other forms of corruption. To his credit, he has not hesitated to jail corrupt union leaders, businessmen and drug dealers. The next time a political dinosaur is responsible for corrupting the electoral process, he too should be tossed into prison.

That would really get the message across that times are changing in Mexico. Not only is a proud but too long underdeveloped nation taking its first, firm steps toward becoming a modern economy. It is taking its first, firm steps toward becoming a genuine democracy.