NEWS ANALYSIS : Credibility for Mexico’s President : Opposition’s Win in Baja Gives Boost to Both Sides

MEXICO CITY —  There were two winners in the Baja California governor’s election last weekend.

The first was Ernesto Ruffo Appel, the rightist National Action Party candidate whose victory at the polls means that he will serve as the first opposition state governor in the history of Mexico.

The other was President Carlos Salinas de Gortari. Salinas, whose own election was seriously questioned last year, earned immeasurable credibility by accepting the ruling party’s unprecedented defeat.

The Institutional Revolutionary Party, or the PRI, has been accused of stealing so many elections in its 60-year domination of Mexican politics--the Mexicali mayoralty in 1983 and the Chihuahua governorship in 1986 are among the more recent examples--that this time it may have gained more by losing a race than by winning.

“This isn’t exactly something I am celebrating, but it is a step that we had to take,” the PRI’s national president, Luis Donaldo Colosio, said in an interview Wednesday.

“This demonstrates the congruence between what President Salinas says and what he does through a democratic presidency. And it was a tough test that will serve us to reorganize the party to participate in real political competitions,” Colosio said.

On Tuesday night, Colosio made the bombshell announcement that the PRI expected to lose the Baja governor’s race. Shortly afterwards, the party’s candidate, Margarita Ortega Villa, conceded defeat on television. Official results are not due until Sunday.

The PRI still has a fight on its hands to prove Colosio’s assertion that it won the mayoral races in Tijuana, Mexicali and Tecate, along with 12 of 15 seats in the state’s legislature. Officials from the National Action Party, known as PAN, claim to have proof that their candidates won Tijuana and 10 legislative seats. They charge that the PRI is illegally attempting to maintain veto power over the new governor.

“We’d have our hands and legs tied,” Tijuana PAN activist Arturo Moralesa said.

Likewise, leftist leader Cuauhtemoc Cardenas is challenging the PRI’s claim to have won 10 of 18 legislative seats in his home state of Michoacan. Cardenas insists that his Democratic Revolutionary Party won most, if not all, of the seats.

Some Cardenas supporters believe the PRI recognized PAN’s victory in order to defeat the Cardenas movement--which broke away from the PRI and emerged with force in the 1988 presidential election--and to win support from PAN for a moderate new electoral law that is to be debated in the National Congress next month.

Better Fraud Control

Opposition members of all stripes insist that PAN’s victory in Baja is due not so much to the PRI’s new disposition toward democracy but to the opposition’s growing ability to prevent fraud. In Baja California, PAN closely scrutinized voter registration lists before the election. The party had observers at virtually all of the polling places on election day to watch for cheating and to collect signed copies of the official results at each ballot box.

“This is the first time the opposition has had the strength to defend an unquestionable victory,” political analyst Federico Reyes Heroles said. “Fraud in Baja California would have been extremely difficult.”

However the victory was secured, few would question that it breaks important new ground in Mexican politics.

The Mexican political system has been highly centralized, with all lines of party, state and judicial power leading to the president. In the PRI system, the governors have been an extension of the president, much like the colonial viceroys of the Spanish king.

Mexican presidents have offered a variety of excuses for holding onto that control. In the 1930s and 1940s, it was thought that the federation was weak and that regional movements could divide the country. In the 1960s, as the country developed its industrial base, it was feared that opposition states could become obstacles to the country’s economic integration.

Feared as ‘Trojan Horse’

By the 1980s, when the right-of-center PAN became strong, PAN’s pro-Yankee rhetoric was seen as threatening to Mexico, particularly as the ruling party was losing its appeal with the country’s eroding economy. PAN was feared as a “Trojan horse” from the United States.

But the political system was shaken last year when the leftist Cardenas won an unprecedented 31% of the presidential vote, and Salinas earned just over 50%--the lowest ever for a PRI president. Opposition parties won nearly half of the Chamber of Deputies seats and their first seats in the Senate. Moreover, they insisted that the PRI had stolen the presidency.

Upon taking office, Salinas promised political reforms and democracy. His vow to respect the outcome of elections led this week to the election of Ruffo.

Stunned PRI officials Wednesday were asking why Ruffo won. They had considered Ortega, 38, a good candidate with a clean record. She fought an aggressive and well-funded campaign backed by the president.

When she was named as the PRI candidate, there was some speculation that a woman would have a hard time winning in a nation that has had only two woman governors. But the PRI, rather than Ortega’s gender, seemed to be the deciding issue.

In retrospect, PRI sources said, Ortega was not able to overcome the tremendous unpopularity of former Gov. Xicotencatl Leyva Mortera, who was widely viewed as corrupt. Salinas replaced Leyva Mortera soon after taking office, but the damage apparently had been done.

Officials also blamed a badly divided party in Baja. Ortega suffered her greatest loss in Tijuana, where the party’s backing for her was weakest. And, some admitted, the vote underscores a national distrust of the PRI and anger over the country’s ailing economy.

Despite the boost to Salinas’ image, one official noted, “a defeat is still a defeat.”

Political scientist Lorenzo Meyer, however, argued that a defeat for the PRI is good for the country.

“Those of us who have insisted that it is impossible to continue with a one-party monopoly are very happy. We cannot assume that the Mexican authoritarian system has ended, but this is the beginning of the end.”

And political analyst Reyes Heroles said Ruffo’s six-year governorship represents “a new era of political cohabitation.”

In that respect, both sides have a lot to learn. Ruffo, 37, the former mayor of Ensenada, now must prove that PAN is not only an effective opposition party but a capable executive power. If Ruffo is faced with a PRI-dominated legislature and PRI city governments, he will have to show skill in negotiating to push forward his program.

“It is not the same fighting from below as fighting from on top,” Reyes Heroles said.

The PRI, on the other hand, has never been in the opposition like this, and old-time party members are not expected to like it. Salinas may expect a backlash from his own party conservatives who believe he is giving up too much.

When PAN won city halls in the past, the PRI’s response was to try to strangle the local governments. Former Gov. Leyva Mortera reacted to Ruffo’s mayoralty in Ensenada by cutting his budget. The move backfired when the populist politician mobilized the town to help him clean up city streets and became a hero as a result. It may have been what won Ruffo the governorship.

Ruffo jokes that if the PRI federal government tries the same tactic, it is likely to catapult him into the presidency in 1994.

Federal officials say they plan to do no such thing. They acknowledge that to cut off aid to Baja California would be self-defeating. Baja has important tourism, import and export industries that earn badly needed dollars for Mexico. A deterioration of the state’s infrastructure is likely to hurt those industries and, therefore, hurt the country.

A border state, Baja is closely observed in the United States. A political crisis there reverberates far beyond Mexico’s borders.

“The federal government will act with political intelligence, and they (Ruffo’s government) will be smart to have a good relationship with the federal government,” said a government source. “They are going to have to learn to govern, and we are going to have to learn to live with them.”

Miller reported from Mexico City and McDonnell from Tijuana.