Thread: Unwelcome Ex-President Returns to Limelight in Mexico

Monday, May 12, 2008

Unwelcome Ex-President Returns to Limelight in Mexico

By Allan Wall

In the midst of all of Mexico’s other problems, including the PEMEX debate and ongoing drug war carnage, who should choose this time to return to Mexico but former president Carlos Salinas de Gortari.

Nor is the controversial former president content to keep a low profile. No, far, from it. Salinas is promoting a new book and speaking out on the issues, and critiquing his presidential successors.

Carlos Salinas was president of Mexico from 1988 to 1994. The country was in a state of transition, with the PRI (Institutional Revolutionary Party) slowly losing power, and opposition forces gaining power. Despite having begun his administration under the cloud of a contested election, Salinas launched an ambitious series of reforms which, though controversial, changed Mexico in several ways.

It was Salinas who negotiated NAFTA (the North American Free Trade Agreement) with the United States and Canada. Salinas reversed the 1982 bank nationalization, renegotiated Mexico’s debt, drastically reduced inflation, and while he didn’t stop the devaluation of the peso, it did devalue less than during the two previous presidencies.

Salinas was a great privatizer, although much of the privatization might have been better classified as crony capitalization. When he took office Mexico had 600 state-owned industries, when he left office it only had 250. Carlos Salinas privatized banks, the telephone monopoly Telmex (which Carlos Slim bought) and the television station Imevision (now called TV Azteca).

President Salinas reformed church-state relations, allowing the clergy to vote and churches to own their own property.

Electoral reforms were made, including the voter ID cards, which set the stage for the eventual defeat of the PRI in 2000.

Things were looking good, and many felt that Mexico was on the verge of achieving “First Worldâ€

However, Salinas thinks current president Felipe Calderon, of the PAN, is on the right track and calls him a “reformer president.â€