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TIME: Almanac 1990
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1990 Time Magazine Compact Almanac, The (1991)(Time).iso
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time
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071789
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07178900.015
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1990-09-17
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WORLD, Page 67MEXICODemocracy Wins a RoundFor the first time, the P.R.I. concedes defeat in a gubernatorialrace
Democracy came to Mexico last week -- sort of. In the booming
border state of Baja California Norte, Ernesto Ruffo Appel, the
candidate of the conservative National Action Party (PAN), was
declared the victor over Margarita Ortega Villa, the candidate of
the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (P.R.I.) in the race
for governor. Once officially confirmed this week, Ruffo's victory
will mark the first time in the 60-year history of the P.R.I. that
the party has conceded defeat in such an election. "It is a
decisive event," says political analyst Jorge Castaneda, "the first
that will have an authentic historic significance in this
administration."
Those words had a hollow ring in the state of Michoacan, where
the results of the state legislature's race -- another of the five
state elections held last week -- remain hotly contested by
Cuauhtemoc Cardenas and his Democratic Revolutionary Party
(P.R.D.). The old pattern of fraud and stolen elections seemed to
be reasserting itself as the P.R.I. claimed to have won ten of the
18 electoral districts while the P.R.D., alleging widespread
irregularity, insisted that it had carried 15 districts. At a press
conference on election day, Cardenas accused the P.R.I. of cheating
by changing the location of the casillas (voting sites) at the last
minute, allowing P.R.I. supporters to cast more than one ballot and
barring P.R.D. officials from the casillas.
The Ruffo victory is nevertheless regarded as a crucial turning
point for the seven-month-old presidency of Carlos Salinas de
Gortari and a watershed in Mexican politics. Salinas, who took
office amid charges that he was elected by fraud, vowed that
"opposition victories will be respected." He has led a forceful
campaign against corruption by arresting powerful drug lords,
businessmen and labor leaders. Yet he is still perceived as someone
elected by and for the Establishment. The P.R.I.'s acceptance of
defeat in Baja is considered a critical test of Salinas' ability
-- and desire -- to enforce reform within his own party.
Some analysts contend Salinas purposely allowed PAN, which is
philosophically closer to his administration than is Cardenas'
radical P.R.D., to win an election to restore the ruling party's
lost credibility. Others theorize that Salinas has a vision of
Mexico that does not include a monopoly on power by a single party.
By forcing the increasingly sclerotic P.R.I. into an opposition
role, goes the argument, the defeat in Baja will eventually lead
to a more resilient political system. Perhaps. But what no one
disputes is that the state of the economy was a major factor behind
Salinas' decision to loosen P.R.I. control.
Since 1982, the country has been battered by a financial crisis
that has fueled popular resentment, partly by eroding the system
of political patronage that has helped keep the P.R.I. in power.
In recent months, the World Bank and the International Monetary
Fund have announced new loans and guarantees designed to help
Salinas lead the country out of its economic slump. And there were
signs last week that Mexico and 15 foreign banks were on the verge
of an agreement that would offer the country a 35% discount on the
face value of Mexico's $54 billion debt to commercial banks,
cutting back the annual repayments that are sapping Mexico's
Treasury. According to Susan Kaufman Purcell, vice president for
Latin American Affairs at the New York-based Americas Society,
Salinas realizes that political reform must accompany desperately
needed economic changes. Says Purcell: "Political reforms became
a kind of safety valve to allow him to continue the economic
restructuring without creating political conflict."
It is also possible that Salinas' form of limited democracy
may increase pressure to reform the entire system. The voters, says
Jesus Blancornelas, editor of the independent Tijuana daily Zeta,
are like "a person who has been jailed and is suddenly let free.
They're not going to want to go back to jail."