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Can Mexico's Political System Survive?
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12075 |
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Section : |
CURRENT ISSUES
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| Issue
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12 / 1987 |
2,504 Words |
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Sol W. Sanders
Sol W. Sanders recently edited Through Asian Eyes: Policy in
the Asian Century. He writes a weekly column, "A Sense of
Asia," for www.worldtribune.com. |
The selection of Carlos Salinas de Gortari as Mexico's next president promises no dramatic change in Mexican policy. Although a more noisy opposition than ever before in Mexico's carefully managed electoral process is guaranteed, 60 years of unrelenting victories for the government party offer little chance that Salinas will not be ushered into office.
The selection followed the standard succession scenario in which the incumbent president, Miguel de la Madrid Hurtado, personally chose his successor. Unfortunately, it did little to reassure those who wonder how long Mexico can continue to endure its seven-year-old debilitating economic and political crisis without an explosion.
Salinas, now de la Madrid's secretary of budget and planning, comes from the so-called technocrat wing of the ruling Partido Revolucionario Institucional, or Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI). Intelligent, highly educated, wealthy and sophisticated, he is a member of the Mexican elite that has dominated the country since the mid-1930s and that is no less a closed circle than the oligarchies of other Latin American countries, its left-wing rhetoric and talk of revolution notwithstanding. Salinas' father is a prominent senator; he himself entered PRI politics at an early age and has held an array of jobs in both the party and the government bureaucracy.
Like the incumbent and his two predecessors, Salinas has never served in an elective office - even elective office in the Mexican fashion. "Elections" of senators, congressmen, governors, and even mayors of large cities are largely personal appointments of PRI candidates by the president. The elections
... (1992 of 15246 Characters)
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