Monday, October 3, 2005
The resurrection of Mexico’s
Carlos Salinas de Gortari
By Carlos Luken
Last year I wrote a column regarding former President Carlos
Salinas de Gortari resurfacing in Mexico, after years of self-imposed exile
in Ireland and Cuba. Salinas had returned, and craftily waded right back into Mexico’s political waters. And at the time it appeared he was not just in the middle of things, but running them.
His straightforward approach attracted media coverage that
provoked political speculation and intrigues. Astutely Salinas again slipped back into public obscurity, except for appearances at family affairs such as the funerals of his father and his murdered brother.
Only
six months before leaving office, in late 1994, Salinas was so popular that a possible reelection was rumored openly, an extraordinary
occurrence in a country were non-reelection is as sacred as one of the Commandments. But within months after handing over
the presidency to his handpicked successor, Ernesto Zedillo, Salinas had become Mexico’s worst scoundrel.
His
political world also caved in as former confederates tried unsuccessfully to expel him from the Institutional Revolutionary
Party (PRI). After six months it was apparent that Salinas would not be welcome in Zedillo’s Mexico. As such, he would
have to keep distant and silent for six years.
His
prospects dimmed in 1999, when PRI convention delegates selected
Zedillo-backed Francisco Labastida to be the party’s presidential candidate, over Salinas’ favorite Roberto
Madrazo. Labastida immediately proclaimed that the Salinas era was over, which was another message for him to stay away.
But
with the PRI’s disarray following the 2000 election loss to Vicente Fox, Salinas made his move and oversaw the party’s
rebuilding. Capitalizing on confusion, he first started by renovating the party’s ineffective leadership, backing Madrazo
for the PRI presidency. In order to further consolidate his power, Salinas prompted
the selections of Elba Esther Gordillo as party secretary general, and former treasury minister Pedro Aspe as its finance
director.
Having reacquired control over the PRI, Salinas became
the direct benefactor and beneficiary of the party’s unexpected triumphs in the 2003 elections, with PRI candidates
allegedly handpicked by the former president winning a majority in the lower chamber of congress.
Yet a decade after
being disgraced, his name still brings bad memories to most Mexicans as he is blamed for everything from economic disaster
to political intrigue.
And now Salinas has reappeared as a major political kingpin.
Today
the PRI’s three most influential leaders are Salinas sidekicks Madrazo and Arturo Montiel, both presidential contenders,
and Elba Esther Gordillo, the party’s mutinous ex-secretary general.
But
Salinas has not limited his activities to the PRI. He initiated a rapport with the Fox administration through Gordillo’s
supposed friendship with President and Mrs. Fox, and by meeting with then foreign minister Jorge Castaņeda at a well-publicized
Brussels dinner.
In
late September, on Mexican television, Salinas acknowledged
overseeing a secret meeting at his home between Fox’s Finance Minister Francisco Gil Diaz and
PRI leaders, to offer advice on tax reforms to
be presented in Congress. The former president said he was helping Fox officials,
by giving them the benefit of his experience.
His remarks followed Gordillo's caustic disclosure of the meeting that both she and former PRI president Madrazo attended.
The
administration’s initial response was a denial issued by Fox personally. Just days later Gil Diaz admitted meeting with
the PRI president, secretary general and other high-ranking party officials in 2003, to procure accords on tax reforms. Gil
Diaz said however that he had not informed Fox, because it would be "impractical" to keep the president abreast of his entire
agenda.
Government
spokesman Ruben Aguilar was forced to defend Gil Diaz, telling journalists that the finance minister supposedly “had
a wide margin to carry out the tasks given him by the president, and to consult with whomever necessary." Aguilar refused to confirm Salinas' statements, and tried to downplay the ex-president’s
involvement, calling him a "common citizen" with the right to free assembly.
Mexico's front-running leftwing presidential candidate, former Mexico City Mayor Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, blames free-market reforms implemented by Salinas for impoverishing millions and encouraging
corruption. He refers to Salinas only as "the
unmentionable," and claims that the unmentionable one is conspiring with Fox to stop his candidacy. Although Lopez’s Democratic Revolution Party (PRD)
refuses kinship with Salinas, reports are that the ex-president has made overtures to some PRD dissenters, and to smaller
party leaders, in order to ease future political alliances.
Once
more Salinas has positioned himself as an influential political powerbroker to be reckoned with, especially during the 2006
election campaigns that are already underway.
____________________
Carlos Luken, a MexiData.info columnist, is
a Mexico-based businessman and consultant. He can be reached via e-mail at ilcmex@yahoo.com.
