Annotations for People: Ayon-david R

His own destape, his own unveiling and his being chosen by Selena was handled perhaps in a more undemocratic fashion than in the previous two presidential successions.

Well, I think it is now pretty plain that Salinas has been grooming Colosio for this moment, for this role for quite a number of years. Further than that, he also has an enormous amount of experience in knowing how to run a campaign all over the country. He was Salinas' own campaign manager when Salinas was a candidate in 1988, and subsequent to that, Salinas made Colosio the president of the PRI party. So Colosio is very well positioned and the ground has been prepared very carefully for him to be something of an ideal candidate, to be the PRI standard there.

He's unlikely to represent any difference or modification of the basic project or trajectory that's been traced by Salinas, which is one of really transforming various levels, Mexico's attitude towards the United States and its relationship with the United States. This is the project that continues along the path of especially commercial and business integration.

It's very difficult to see how this is going to be democratized and they plainly have not achieved this at all. In fact, Colosio's own destape, his own unveiling and his being chosen, the dedazo, the pointing of the big finger by Salinas was handled perhaps in a more undemocratic fashion than in the previous two presidential successions. It was just simply announced suddenly, unexpectedly Sunday morning that he's going to be the guy without any pretense of a process whatsoever. So I think what this suggests to us is that they haven't figured their way out of a really complicated corner that historically the Mexican political system finds itself in.

Colosio is going to have a vast machine and a virtually unlimited budget behind him. He starts already, if we can go by most recent polls, there was a poll taken in October that measured a hypothetical matchup between Colosio and Cardenas. He already starts with a significant lead about a dozen percentage points over Cardenas, and that is before ever being named. This is such a mountain to overcome that it's really hard to conceive that Cardenas, popular as he genuinely is, will be able to really to surmount it.