Monday, August 11, 2003

The resurrection of Carlos Salinas de Gortari

By Carlos Luken

Reports relating to the phoenix-like resurgence of former president Carlos Salinas de Gortari are flying all over Mexican political circles.  After a near decade of self-imposed exile in Ireland and Cuba, and near invisibility from public life except for guarded cameo appearances, it now appears that Salinas is not just in the middle of things, but running them.

Salinas is certainly familiar to the political winds of change.

Six months before he left office in 1994, Salinas was so popular that gossip concerning his possible reelection was discussed openly, an extraordinary occurrence in a country were no reelection is as sacred a rule as one of the commandments. Six months after handing over the presidency to his handpicked successor, Ernesto Zedillo, Salinas was seen as Mexico’s most wicked scoundrel.

Among other things, Salinas was accused of lying to the Mexican people and blamed for the economic catastrophe that ushered in the Zedillo era.  He was also accused of masterminding the assassination of his own Institutional Revolutionary Party’s (PRI) presidential candidate, Luis Donaldo Colosio, plus there were attempts to expel him from the party as an undesirable.

After six months it was apparent that Salinas would not be welcomed back into Zedillo’s Mexico. As such, he would have to keep distant and silent for six years.

Things didn’t look much brighter in 1999, when PRI convention delegates selected Zedillo-backed Francisco Labastida to be the party’s presidential candidate, over alleged Salinas’ favorite Roberto Madrazo. Labastida’s immediate announcement, that the Salinas era was over, was another clear message for him to stay away.

By that time the man was a political cadaver.

When National Action Party (PAN) presidential candidate Vicente Fox beat Labastida in the 2000 elections it ended 71-years of PRI rule, and this was heralded as Mexico’s democratic transformation into the XXI century. Oddly it also brought new life to Salinas.

With the PRI in shambles Salinas could make his move and oversee the party’s needed rebuilding. Capitalizing on the devastating election loss, he first started to renovate the party’s ineffective leadership by backing Roberto Madrazo for the PRI presidency.  Madrazo won the post over an old nemesis of Salinas, Senator Manuel Bartlett.  Moreover, in order to further consolidate his power Salinas prompted the selections of Elba Esther Gordillo as secretary general of the party and former treasury minister Pedro Aspe as its finance director.

Having now reacquired control over the party, Salinas became the direct beneficiary of the PRI’s unexpected triumphs in the 2003 elections.  On July 6 the party won the largest block of seats in the lower house of congress, and this was with candidates who allegedly were handpicked by the former president. Not being a man of leisure, Salinas purportedly next manipulated the election of Elba Esther Gordillo as the PRI’s lower house leader over Manlio Beltrones, an unfriendly ex-governor of Sonora. Gordillo won with over 60 percent of the vote.

The return of Salinas has not gone uncontested. Some PRI members oppose him, like powerhouse Senator Bartlett and certain governors. They see him as dangerous, and they fear that Salinas might try to position himself as the country’s number one powerbroker (much like what was done by some of the original founders of the PRI). As to the 90 votes cast by the incoming congressmen for Beltrones, this could be a prelude to the scuttling of Salinas-backed plans.

Carlos Salinas has not limited his activities to just his own party. Although the leftwing Democratic Revolution Party (PRD) refuses any relationship whatsoever with Salinas, reports are that he has made overtures to smaller party leaders in order to facilitate future congressional negotiations.

Salinas has also tried to initiate a rapport with the Fox administration, by meeting with former foreign minister Jorge Castañeda in a well-publicized dinner in Brussels, and through Elba Esther Gordillo’s supposed friendship with the Foxes. As for the PAN, some prominent party members have expressed a clear interest in talks with Salinas as long as his activities remain legitimate.

The formal coming out party for Salinas was staged last April, during his daughter’s much ballyhooed and who’s who guest wedding. Interestingly the journalists who covered the socially important event were not from the society or fashion sections of the media, but top reporters from the political and national desks of major dailies and news services.

As for today, clearly Salinas has again positioned himself as a political influence in Mexico that must be considered and reckoned with in all future political events.

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Carlos Luken, a Mexicali, Baja California, based businessman, is the principal in I.L.C. Corporate Real Estate, a project development firm, and I.L.C. Corporate Services, a consulting practice that provides business management, consultancy and lobbying services to global corporations and government agencies. He can be reached via e-mail at ilc@computec.com.mx

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