Word: pries
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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UNFORTUNATELY for Salinas, his troubles don't end with the foreign debt crisis and the drastic measures it has imposed on the Mexican people. He finds himself in a climate of political turmoil, with no clear mandate for himself or his Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) and a bigger and more vocal opposition in Congress than ever before. Having won what the opposition charges was a fraud-laden election, with a bare majority of 50.7 percent--the worst showing ever for a PRI candidate (who always wins)--Salinas enters office with a less than impressive political mandate...
While Salinas has pledged to "modernize" the highly-centralized, corporatist political system in which the PRI has come to monopolize political control, he has yet to give any clear indication as to how he will open up the system to competitive party politics and insure that candidates for public office will be those who demonstrate broad popular support, rather than those who slavishly follow the dictates of the PRI hierarchy. As it now stands, the PRI fields the slate of candidates, meaning that those public officials who dare to buck the party establishment quickly find their careers in jeopardy...
...Salinas has yet to show any such independence in his Cabinet appointments. He was putting young, foreign-educated technocrats in top economic positions, while maintaining the intransigent old guard of PRI leaders, who will resist any attempts to weaken the party's hold over the state in key political positions...
...same time, Salinas must go beyond mere rhetorical fluorishes in making a commitment to democracy, take on the entrenched "dinosaurs" and bureaucrats of his own party and enable opposition parties to compete on an equal basis in the electoral process after more than a half-century of authoritarian PRI rule. By reneging on his promises for political democratization, Salinas would give his opponents every reason to sabotage his economic policies and threaten the country's future political stability...
Another contradiction arises in the current case of Mexico. Where was the United States when the elections in Mexico resulted in charges of fraud by the losing party? Will the U.S. allow the PRI, which has ruled Mexico for nearly six decades, to ignore the charges? So much for the democratic process that supposedly favors the periodic change of political parties...