MEXPAZ #56 ANALYSIS (fwd)

[Victor O. Story]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Fri, 26 Jan 1996 18:10:19 CST
From: MEXPAZ_analysis <anal...@uibero.uia.mx>
To: anal...@uibero.uia.mx
Subject: MEXPAZ #56 ANALYSIS

The Political Reform of the State and the Interests of the PRI

A Contribution From the CEE

When Emilio Chauyffet was named Minister of the Interior, his main
task was to effect Mexico's political reform. Six months later,
however, the possibilities of the political reform have gotten lost
in the eventuality of Chauyffet's being the Institutional
Revolutionary Party (PRI) candidate for the presidency in the year
2000: the suspicion therefore exists that he might carry out the
political reform to favor his own political career and not to pave
the way toward democracy.

Since the political reform is indispensable to ensure the 1997
federal and Mexico City mayoral elections bring fewer conflicts
than prior elections, and since even now the projections are that
the opposition will win the federal Congress and the Federal
District (Mexico's capital), the key to the political reform to be
negotiated in the Ministry of the Interior lies in the thinking of
Minister Chauyffet. Does he aspire or not to a presidential
candidacy? The difficult point lies in the fact that the political
reform has to guarantee clean elections for the opposition so that
democracy begins with parties alternating in power.

Politics is full of paradoxes. In the past, the very probability
that the Minister of the Interior was sure to be the next PRI
presidential candidate gave him the political clout to negotiate
political openings. Today, in contrast, including the Minister of
the Interior in the list of possible PRI presidential nominees for
the year 2000 takes credibility and strength away from him in the
face of his task of negotiating what should be the political reform
for the transition to democracy.

While it is of note that Chauyffet did not attend the fiftieth
anniversary celebration of the PRI, more concrete definitions are
needed. The Minister of the Interior is sending contradictory
signals that might indicate that he is not working for a political
reform to make democracy a viable proposition, but rather in favor
of his own candidacy to the presidency. For example, Jos Natividad
Gonz lez Parras, the undersecretary for political development of
the Ministry of the Interior may well be the next PRI gubernatorial
candidate for the state of Nuevo Le"n.

And, if political signals should be interpreted as they come, then
the Ministry of the Interior might well become a factory of PRI
governors. Chauyffet himself is a PRI governor on leave of absence,
and he has five potential PRI gubernatorial candidates on his team:
Gonz lez Parras for Nuevo Le"n, Arturo Nu$ez for Tabasco, Juan
Ramiro Robledo for San Luis Potos!, Carlos Almada -currently
presidential spokesman but who was previously with the Ministry of
the Interior- for Sinaloa and Csar Becker for the State of Mxico.

For all these reasons, it is clear that the political reform does
not depend exclusively on what the different parties want, but also
on a personal political decision of the Minister of the Interior:
a reform for the country or for the PRI's presidential candidacy in
the year 2000.

Erendira Cruz Villegas.

CEE