November 22, 2000
By GINGER THOMPSON
MEXICO CITY, Nov. 21 At last Vicente Fox Quesada is expected to
begin announcing the choices for his cabinet, on Wednesday.
With the announcements, Mr. Fox, who as the first person in 71
years to defeat the Institutional Revolutionary Party becomes
president in 10 days, aims to shatter the strength of the old-boy
networks that dominated politics. He has pledged to chose men and
women from a variety of viewpoints and party affiliations.
At a news conference, Mr. Fox is generally expected the appoint a
leftist academic, Jorge G. Castañeda, as foreign minister and will
try to keep Wall Street calm by selecting an eminent economist as
treasury secretary. He is Francisco Gil Díaz, who is committed to
upholding the free- market changes made by the departing president,
Ernesto Zedillo.
The selections are a result of an extraordinary nationwide search
that involved as much input from head hunters and advice from Mr.
Fox's rivals as it did from leaders of his own conservative
National Action Party. The process has been subject to numerous
delays and intense competition on the transition team.
Because Mr. Fox is known as more of a pragmatist than a party
stalwart, members of his party have been quietly nervous about
whether their leaders would be given prominent positions. Women's
groups have pressured Mr. Fox to include a respectable number of
their leaders.
Leftist leaders of the Democratic Revolutionary Party refused to
accept any positions in the cabinet.
A number of those expected to be chosen will be longtime allies.
But it appears that Mr. Fox will fulfill his promise to build a
pluralistic government by appointing lawyers, academics, economists
and business leaders with little government experience and just
tenuous ties to his campaign.
The diversity reflects not only Mr. Fox's pledges to voters and
promises of change. It also demonstrates his pragmatism. Because he
will be president without a majority in Congress, it is crucial to
build bridges in many camps if he is to win approval for the
unpopular programs that he hopes to undertake, including reforming
the tax structure and privatizing electricity.
Although experts praise the variety, others wonder whether people
with such vast ideological differences will be able to work
together. Some experts wonder whether a team of unknowns will be
able to live up to the high expectations for reinventing how Mexico
is governed.
"I think it just might work," said a political expert, Gabriel
Guerra. "Having a plural cabinet diminishes the resistance that he
is going to have on all fronts. And it is a much better alternative
than if he had put together a highly ideological team."
In the clearest sign of Mr. Fox's commitment, he will pick Mr.
Castañeda, a polemicist, as foreign minister. Mr. Castañeda, a
left-wing writer who teaches at New York University, is a son of
one of the most distinguished foreign ministers in Mexico's recent
history. But in the eyes of many, Mr. Castañeda lacks diplomatic
experience.
A writer of numerous books on Mexican politics, including
"Perpetuating Power, How Mexican Presidents Were Chosen," which is
being released this week in New York, Mr. Castañeda has
intellectual admirers around the world. But he recently enraged the
Mexican press by writing a haughty newspaper column that scolded
journalists as unsophisticated and unprofessional.
And as a strident leftist, Mr. Castañeda has often been a harsh
critic of United States policy in Latin America and has made a
number of enemies among Republicans in Congress, particularly
Senator Jesse Helms, Republican of North Carolina.
In an interview, Mr. Castañeda acknowledged that there had been
unfavorable rumblings about the prospect of his appointment from
Mr. Helms and from staff members at the Senate Foreign Relations
Committee. But Mr. Castañeda said he had good relations with an
overwhelming majority of Republican leaders, especially among those
working with Gov. George W. Bush.
"When we went to the United States," Mr. Castañeda, said, "Fox saw
that I have solid relationships with people close to Gore and Bush,
that I have relationships at high- levels in the Clinton
administration. And so there will be no real problems. Now we may
not always agree on every issue, but there is an openness to
negotiate and work out our differences."
Mr. Fox is scheduled to give the names of his cabinet in three
separate announcements over the next week. Among the cabinet
members he is widely expected to announce on Wednesday are Mr. Gil
and Luis Ernesto Derbez as secretary of the new economy ministry,
which will take over the duties formerly handled by the commerce
secretary. Neither are members of Mr. Fox's party, the PAN.
Mr. Derbez, 53, has been a chief architect of Mr. Fox's economic
plans throughout his campaign and in the five-month transition
since the elections in July. A former World Bank economist who has
spent most of the last decade outside Mexico, he was generally
considered too unknown and inexperienced to be treasury minister.
His admirers say he knows how to build relationships with those
who disagree with him. And Mr. Derbez has shown intense interest in
strengthening industry, which he says has been neglected in favor
of foreign investment.
Mr. Gil, 57, (pronounced heel) is general director of a
long-distance telephone company, Avantel. He worked as a deputy
governor at the Bank of Mexico and was chief tax collector under
President Carlos Salinas de Gortari.
Mr. Gil, one of the nation's most eminent economists, personifies
the philosophies of his old professor, Milton Friedman at the
University of Chicago. Although Wall Street would be pleased by Mr.
Gil's appointment, many here say his tough convictions might make
him a poor negotiator.
For the treasury secretary, a major task will be to help Mr. Fox
win approval for tax changes aimed at increasing government
revenue. Mr. Gil's appointment may also stir apprehensions among
dominant businessmen like Carlos Slim, president of Telmex and the
nation's wealthiest man. As head of Avantel, Mr. Gil worked to
break up Telmex's near monopoly over telecommunications.
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