Presidential Hopefuls Produce a Race Without Precedent

MEXICO CITY —  For years, Mexican presidential hopefuls did not have to worry about the kinds of scandals that might sink an American candidate. They could cheat on their taxes, their land deals and their wives, and they would still be protected by the authoritarian system. But one offense was unpardonable: admitting that you wanted to be president.

Now that taboo has collapsed. In recent weeks, two politicians have begun to seek the nomination for 2000. The early campaign is unprecedented in a country where presidents traditionally handpicked their successors. But rather than produce excitement, the campaign is provoking concern.

The reason: The old, unwritten rules governing Mexican politics are collapsing--but new ones have not been agreed upon. No one knows, for example, how the long-ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, will choose its candidate.

“This could come to bullets,” said Jose Antonio Crespo, a political analyst. “That’s what happened before there were rules. They [candidates] killed each other.”

While such a prospect might seem remote, many politicians and analysts fear the fight for power--especially within the PRI--could provoke political instability.

“There is a worrying precedent,” noted Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, head of the leftist Democratic Revolution Party, referring to the unsolved assassination of PRI presidential candidate Luis Donaldo Colosio in March 1994.

The taboo on openly campaigning for the presidency was once key to Mexico’s political stability. In order to end a tradition of political violence, Mexican politicians in 1929 established a system based on one-party rule. Every president since has been a PRI member who controlled a loyal Congress.

The system counted on tight discipline in the ranks when the president named his own successor in a process known as the dedazo, or choosing with a finger.

“There was a recognition that the decision wasn’t the party’s, but the president’s, and the president wouldn’t interpret it well if someone expressed interest” in being a candidate, said Jesus Silva Herzog, a veteran politician.

PRI members were so obedient that they would often carry photos of several possible winners to the rally where the presidential candidate’s name was announced, Silva Herzog recalled.

“If it was one candidate, they’d pull out his photo and yell ‘Viva!’ If it was another, it was ‘Viva!’ for the other photo,” he explained.

But President Ernesto Zedillo has vowed to abandon the dedazo as part of his effort to increase democracy and weaken the all-powerful presidency. What will replace it is unclear.

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The first PRI candidate to openly seek the presidency is Manuel Bartlett Diaz, governor of Puebla state.

Mexicans were stunned when an important PRI labor group, the Revolutionary Confederation of Workers and Peasants, or CROC, declared Bartlett its candidate late last month.

Previously, no PRI organization had dared to produce its own presidential nominee.

The governor responded that “it’s not up to me, but rather the leaders and rank and file of my party” to choose the candidate.

But he has said in recent interviews that he is interested in the job, a far more public bid for the nomination than has occurred in the past.

Most analysts consider Bartlett a symbol of the “dinosaurs,” old-line party members who have opposed the free-market policies followed by Zedillo and the party’s technocrats.

Meanwhile, a member of the conservative National Action Party, or PAN, Vicente Fox, has begun barnstorming the country, also seeking the presidential nomination. The charismatic former Coca-Cola executive is governor of Guanajuato state.

PAN has held conventions to choose its candidate. But in the past, the opposition also launched its campaign much closer to the election.

Fox said he launched an early campaign in order to end the tradition in which the presidential race was controlled from the presidential palace and key decisions were made by a few people.

“We want to bury in the past these old vices that caused our country so many problems,” he said in an interview with the news weekly Milenio. “We want to end the hypocrisy of ‘I’m not interested in the presidency, I have to carry out my current responsibilities’--and move forward, to an electoral process that’s totally transparent and open.”