Mexico's incomplete transition

Two years of upheaval in Mexico have cracked a once-monolithic political establishment, but the transition from authoritarianism to democracy is incomplete. President Ernesto Zedillo, who met with President Clinton on Tuesday, has demonstrated more commitment to political reform than any recent Mexican leader. But he has run into strong opposition within his own, ruling party.

The Clinton administration can help him by demonstrating that the United States attaches as much importance to his desire to free Mexico's politics as it does to opening its economy. Mexico's economic and social stability will be increasingly at risk until an outdated system of unaccountable political power is transformed.

Washington has always offered rhetorical support to Mexican democracy, but its private messages have been ambiguous. Successive administrations have known that elements of Mexico's ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, stole elections and protected drug traffickers. But as long as Mexican leaders promoted market reform and presented themselves as guarantors of stability, Washington raised no protest.

The PRI in its present state, however, is no longer a force for stability. Its original 1994 presidential candidate was assassinated, and rogue elements of the PRI are suspected of involvement. Its secretary-general was gunned down in Mexico City, and the brother of former President Salinas is accused of masterminding the crime. Armed rebels in Chiapas won widespread support by demanding a more democratic political system.

Zedillo won the presidency last year in the least tainted election in decades. Though thrown off balance by an inherited financial crisis, he took promising early steps to cleanse the political system, for example appointing an independent attorney general to probe last year's assassinations. But Mexico still has a long way to go. Judges are not independent. Police torture of suspects is common. Recently the assassination investigations have stalled. Opposition from ruling party barons may be just too powerful.

Zedillo must break through this impasse. He must thoroughly separate the ruling party from the machinery of government. Without this, there can be no fair multi-party competition. Debate on Mexico in this country has focused on the North American Free Trade Agreement, which despite the setback of the peso crisis, is working reasonably well, and on this year's loan guarantees, which Mexico is paying back.

The issue of political reform is no less important, and there is not much time left for Mexico to get it right.

-- The New York Times