By JANE BUSSEY
Herald Staff Writer

MEXICO CITY -- Once a matter of back-room bartering and private deals,
presidential nominations in Mexico are taking on the appearance of a real
public slugfest: TV commercials, flyers and billboards, and -- most of all --
openly declared candidates.

For more than seven decades, each outgoing president anointed his successor,
usually a member of his Cabinet, and the elections that followed were a mere
formality. But President Ernesto Zedillo, bowing to popular pressure, has
insisted he will not continue the tradition.

As a result, the race is on for party nominations, and this early sprint to reach
Los Pinos -- the Mexican White House -- is fraying more than just taboos in
the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI). A real transition to
democracy would boost Mexico's standing, but the interim is fraught with
uncertainty.

The flickering figures on television and the towering billboards would be
normal in other countries, but here they are a novelty.

`Wear and tear'

``It certainly is looking competitive,'' said Javier Hidalgo, a Mexico City
councilman from the left-of-center Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD).
``But there is real wear and tear on the political system here.''

In the PRD, the political free-for-all has descended into mud-slinging between
the leading candidates, legislator Porfirio Muñoz Ledo and Cuauhtemoc
Cardenas, the first opposition mayor of Mexico City.

In the conservative National Action Party, former presidential candidate Diego
Fernandez de Cevallos is being drafted to challenge front-runner Vicente Fox,
the charismatic governor of Guanajuato state whose TV commercials have
been on the air for months.

In the ruling PRI, former Puebla state Gov. Manuel Bartlett formally launched
his campaign in February. It marked the first time that a PRI member has
staged a public campaign for party nomination. Bartlett, considered a long shot
by many, tried unsuccessfully to win the 1988 nomination the traditional way,
by keeping quiet and hoping he received the presidential tap on the shoulder.

`It is different'

``I played by the rules,'' Bartlett said in an interview. ``Now it is different.
Now supposedly the president is not going to decide.''

There are several prominent and dark-horse hopefuls in the PRI. But there are
no rules for a new way to stage the party nomination, further raising skepticism
that old practices will prevail.

``There are no authentic conditions for change,'' said Bertha Lujan, national
coordinator of the Authentic Workers Front. ``Everything points to
Labastida.''

Pundits are already venturing that Interior Minister Francisco Labastida Ochoa
will not only win the party nomination with Zedillo's backing, but also trump
the divided opposition in the July 2000 election. Zedillo brought Labastida into
his Cabinet last year in what was widely viewed as a move to position him for
the nomination.

Still, events in Mexican presidential election years have a way of overtaking
the best-laid plans. The past two election periods have brought the
unexpected: first the 1988 breakaway candidacy of Cardenas, son of revered
former President Lazaro Cardenas, then the 1994 assassination of PRI
candidate Luis Donaldo Colosio several months before the vote.

An economic hedge

Coming on top of the economic crisis that has characterized presidential
election years in Mexico for three decades, each transition period has created
enormous political and economic uncertainty. In a sign that Washington is
interested in ensuring stability, the International Monetary Fund is talking about
$8 billion in contingency loans as insurance against financial turbulence next
year.

``Nothing is written in stone yet,'' Lujan said. ``There are difficulties in the
opposition, but there are also difficulties inside the PRI. Breakdowns in the
PRI will allow the opposition to advance.''

Bartlett's early move nudged Labastida into declaring his desire to run in
mid-March. But even that moment was short-lived. Several days later, the PRI
faithful in Veracruz announced they wanted their governor, Miguel Aleman
Velazquez, son of a former president, to become the party's choice. Even the
opposition concedes Aleman would be a formidable opponent.

Other possibilities

Also mentioned is Esteban Moctezuma, minister of social welfare, who is close
to Zedillo. Even former Finance Minister Jesus Silva Herzog, who was a PRI
presidential hopeful in the 1980s, has been mentioned as a dark horse.

Mexicans are so fixated on the presidential succession that a new book by
political commentator Jorge G. Castañeda, La Herencia  (The Inheritance),
about past presidential selections, sold out 30,000 copies in four days. The
book launching March 20 turned into a major political event.

Bartlett and Muñoz Ledo told the standing-room-only crowd that Mexico's
challenge was to eliminate the roots of the country's political crisis. This
includes a political system giving presidents excessive power, symbolized by
the presidential dedazo, or tap of the finger, that allowed the nation's leader to
circumvent authentic democracy by naming his successor.

``The presidents, in order to avoid reelection, invented this way of handpicking
their successors and thus plunged the country into the worst crisis that Mexico
has experienced in its contemporary history,'' said Sealtiel Alatriste, chief
editor of Alfaguara, which published Castañeda's book.

``In this current presidential succession, will we ruin ourselves even more?''
Alatriste asked the crowd at the book launching.