January 21, 2002
After holding back for more than a year, Mexican President Vicente Fox appears to be going after corruption in high places and risks unleashing a political whirlwind in the process. Mexico's comptroller general revealed over the weekend he was investigating fund transfers from state oil giant Petroleos Mexicanos (Pemex) that may have helped indirectly bankroll the Institutional Revolutionary Party's (PRI) losing candidate in the 2000 presidential election. The PRI's candidate, Francisco Labastida, was routed by Fox in an election that brought down the curtain on 71 years of one-party rule.
The new government, installed in December 2000, took a cautious line in its dealings with the defeated PRI in its first year in office as part of an apparent strategy to woo its support in Congress, where no single party holds a majority. All that may change dramatically if the investigation into Pemex turns up hard evidence that money from the nation's largest state enterprise was siphoned off through an oil workers' union into PRI party coffers.
''I think the policy of appeasement toward the old regime has not worked,'' said Sergio Aguayo, a Mexican academic and prominent civil rights activist.
War on corruption could help Fox
Fox ''has been losing popularity and is taking advantage by launching a campaign against past corruption,'' he added.
Opinion polls in recent months have pointed to a slow but steady erosion in the popularity of Fox, who rode to power with a promise to root out rampant corruption. Fox struggled to get key legislation through Congress in his first year in power. Politicians in the PRI, which holds an election next month to chose a new leader, have reacted angrily to the Pemex investigation.
''This is a declaration of political war,'' said Humberto Roque Villanueva,'' a PRI senator who made an unsuccesful bid for nomination as the party's presidential candidate in 2000.
The PRI's current party chairwoman, Dulce Maria Sauri, said the PRI's campaign finances were perfectly clean and the government wanted to expose graft at Pemex as a pretext for selling the giant oil firm to private investors. The passage through Congress of a key tax bill, approved in the face of opposition from the PRI, may have led to change in the Fox administration's attitude toward Mexico's former ruling party.
Fox and his conservative National Action Party (PAN), which does not have a working majority in Congress, had hoped to win support from the PRI for a controversial proposal to extend a value-added tax to food and medicines. The PRI obstructed the move and a hodgepodge of new taxes, including levies on luxury goods, were passed in its place with backing from the PAN and the left-wing Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD).
No big fish
''Maybe Fox realizes that they (the government) are not going to get much legislation through so they have nothing to lose,'' said George Grayson, an expert on Mexico at William and Mary College, in Virginia. "In view of the fact that they (the PRI) did not give Fox the support that he wanted from them, it is not in his interest to cover for their past corruption,'' said Lorenzo Meyer, a historian at the elite Colegio de Mexico.
In the past, Mexican presidents have imposed their stamp on the nation by locking up rivals, often for political reasons. President Carlos Salinas, who ruled Mexico from 1988 to 1994, stunned the nation in 1989 when he ordered the arrest of Joaquin Hernandez Galicia, a powerful and reputedly corrupt oil workers' union boss who opposed Salinas' in the election.
However, pressure on the authorities to come up with convincing evidence in the Pemex investigation will be much greater than in past eras, when magistrates often shamelessly planted clues to secure convictions. ''We are in an atmosphere of going through the judicial system,'' said Grayson. ''You have got to have evidence.''
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