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President Ernesto Zedillo addresses the lower house of Congress. (AP)

When Ernesto Zedillo traveled around Mexico two years ago as a newly elected president dealing with the country's economic collapse, he carried a decidedly downbeat message of austerity and sacrifice.

Coming from the successor of the reviled president Carlos Salinas de Gortari, Zedillo's demand for continued belt-tightening was received by struggling Mexicans as cold, somber and unpopular. In many ways, that also was how they viewed their new president, as a stiff, Yale-educated technocrat who hated the sleaziness of Mexican politics and was isolated from his countrymen.

But when Zedillo bounded out of his presidential helicopter last Tuesday at the state university in this small town 250 miles southwest of Chihuahua, all seemed forgiven, all forgotten. Thousands of students greeted him with the type of welcome normally reserved for teen pop idols. He was swarmed by people eager to shake his hand. Bands played, confetti fluttered, cameras flashed, women screamed and swooned.

More than two years into his six-year term, Mexico's mild-mannered president is finally enjoying the honeymoon he never had, even if he remains a lightening rod for complaints by political opponents. At times, Zedillo even seems to be attracting the sort of unquestioning adulation Mexicans traditionally showed their sitting presidents.

"We feel deeply for him in our hearts," said student Dulce Morillo, 18, who shook the president's hand, then clutched her breast, rolled her eyes and screamed. "It's so exciting."

Since Zedillo, 46, is known to disdain politics and populism, officials admit only reluctantly what seems obvious from watching him on a four-day, four-state swing across Mexico: The president is evolving from a technocrat into a politician. At times, he almost seems to be enjoying it.

For Zedillo, the transformation is both deliberate and natural, top government officials and aides said, while the timing is fortuitous. Circumstance and necessity – particularly critical midterm elections this July that his party could lose – are forcing Zedillo to shed his uptight, professorial image for a more outgoing, zesty style.

Furthermore, Mexico is finally emerging from its deepest economic recession in more than 60 years. For the first time in his presidency, Zedillo has something to offer communities when he visits – increases in farm subsidies and social development programs, for instance – instead of having to explain why he devalued the peso, sending the economy and their standards of living into a tailspin.

At the same time, with a state visit by President Clinton scheduled for April and the U.S. president's annual certification that Mexico is a reliable ally in the war on drugs expected in March, Mexican officials are eager to put their best foot forward and project Zedillo as a strong, popular leader, officials here said.

This week, a small group of foreign reporters was invited to join Zedillo on the 1,200-mile journey, which resembled a campaign barnstorming. He cut ribbons, kissed babies, inaugurated buildings and announced hefty increases in federal spending for local programs. Noting the almost triumphant atmosphere of the tour, a Zedillo aide said, "This is his first year of governing. This is the kind of year he would like to have had in 1995."

That year, millions of Mexicans were thrown out of work, consumer interest rates topped 100 percent and inflation raged at more than 50 percent after Zedillo devalued the peso in late 1994, just a few weeks into his presidency.

It was a bad start for the man who never asked to be president and was tapped as his party's nominee only after the first choice, Luis Donaldo Colosio, was shot and killed in March 1994. Things only got worse when, instead of inheriting an economic miracle from Salinas, Zedillo got an unraveling, and allegations that the former president, his brother Raul and other members of the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party were enmeshed in murders, drug trafficking and high-level government corruption. Most of the allegations remain under investigation.

The swirl of problems interrupted the traditional flow of Mexican presidential politics, in which the new head of state rapidly accumulates power and popularity and quickly assumes an almost imperial status. At the same time, Zedillo, in keeping with his Mr. Clean, pro-reform image, began trying to dismantle the imperial presidency through political, economic and judicial reforms.

Most important, he has said, is severing the symbiotic relationship between the sitting government and the party, known as the PRI.

Zedillo has met stiff resistance from the party old guard, who see the potential changes as a threat to a political system that has kept the PRI in power for 67 years without interruption.

Last year, the anti-reformers, popularly known as dinosaurs, blocked a move toward privatizing the state-owned oil company; maneuvered to block the rise of further technocrats to the presidency; and, after a poor showing in local elections last July, severely watered down Zedillo's package of proposed electoral reforms.

Bruised by the defeats, and seeing that his party is in serious jeopardy of losing its majority in Mexico's lower house for the first time in almost seven decades, Zedillo is now concentrating on consolidating his position and using the power of the presidency to help the party in the elections, officials said.

"He doesn't think he's a god, he doesn't think he's a messiah," said one senior government official. "He just wants to help his party get reelected."

Nonetheless, he continues to steer away from the populism he claims to abhor. And while his casual, Phil Donahue speaking style – mike in hand, no podium, no notes – and easy smile win over some crowds, there is still the occasional disconnect.

This week, he blew through three factories, never stopping to shake a worker's hand or have a spontaneous chat. At a breakfast meeting with 800 women, he spent the first 15 minutes talking macro economics. When a crowd surrounded his car while a woman accused his government of doing nothing to help solve the murder of three people in Sinaloa, Zedillo begged off and looked stoically ahead as his driver forced the crowd aside and then sped into the night.

At the numerous stops Zedillo made in the states of Mexico, Sinaloa, Hidalgo and Yucatan, the crowds were clearly chosen to be friendly. Often, the assemblies were organized by members of Zedillo's party, who had bused in supporters from as far as five hours away. At the fringes of the gatherings, many people complained that Zedillo and his government still were not doing enough to raise employment, boost the economy and stop drug trafficking.

Yet there was also the sense that Zedillo, while not a particularly strong leader, may come across as an honest and compassionate one.

"Dr. Zedillo was not our candidate; our candidate, Colosio, was killed," said Roque Romero Sevantes, 50, a farmer who listened to a speech Zedillo gave in an open field in Sinaloa. "But he's a man of heart, he's a good president, and we are with him."

© Copyright 1997 The Washington Post Company

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