1996-12-05 Local Press - Carlos Salinas Interrogated in Ireland
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Carlos Salinas Interrogated in Ireland
On Thursday, November 28, ex-president Carlos Salinas de Gortari was interrogated by the Special Prosecutor in charge of the Colosio murder case in the Mexican Embassy in Dublin, Ireland. Salinas predictably denied any knowledge of who was behind Colosio's murder. He claimed that he himself had advised Colosia to distance himself from the Salinas administration during his campaign and denied any falling out with the candidate. Salinas tried to focus suspicion on Manuel Camacho Solis throughout his testimony. He said that it was a mistake to have named Camacho the Peace Commissioner in Chiapas during the Colosio campaign because his protagonistic role led to "profound uneasiness" within the party and among investors (It was later announced that Camacho Solis had been interrogated during the second week in November). (Reforma, 29 November, 1 December).
Members of the opposition criticized Salinas' testimony and the Prosecutor's handling of it, The Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) representative Jesus Zambrano said that the fact that the Special Prosecutor went to Ireland and treated the ex-president as a distinguished person, "smells bad and doesn't speak well of the investigation". The Secretary General of the National Action Party (PAN) said that "either Salinas is lying or Zedillo lied" about the alleged distancing of Colosio from Salinas. (El Financiero. 30 November).
In a unanimous decision, the Electoral Tribunal of the state of Mexico revoked a prior decision of the State Electoral Institute which awarded eight Congressional seats to the PR! based on proportional representation. The Tribunal argued that for the PRI to have that number of seats, it would have had to have won either 45% of the total vote, or have won in 38 districts, which it did not. As a result, the thirty seats which are distributed according to proportional representation will only be awarded to the opposition. This settled an inter-party struggle that has been going on since the state elections on November 10 over how the seats reserved for proportional representation would be divided up. The PRI will maintain the largest number of seats in the Congress (30), but they will not have an absolute majority (the four opposition parties will have a total 45 seats). (La Jornada, Reforma, 3 December).