6A
Thursday, March 2, 1995
NATION/WORLD
UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Charges filed in Mexico's September assassination
The Associated Press
MEXICO CITY — The laws of Mexican politics seemed as durable as the party that has ruled the country for 65 years: Acting presidents ignore the crimes of their predecessors. Former presidents are neither seen nor heard.
But all that changed when President Ernesto Zedillo's attorney general ordered the arrest of Raul Salinas de Dortari — brother of Carlos Salinas, who turned the presidency over to Zedillo on Dec. 1.
The attorney general's office Tuesday charged Raul Salinas with masterminding and financing the September assassination of Jose Francisco Ruiz Massieu, his former brother-in-law and the No. 2 man in the ruling party.
On the same day, Carlos Salinas gave a series of televised interviews that rejected Zedillo's attempts to blame him for the economic crisis that had shaken confidence in the government — blaming it instead on the errors of December, the decisions leading to a devaluation of the peso, the Mexican unit of money.
"The old Mexican regime is being topped with pick and shovel," analyst Raymundo Riva Palacio wrote in the daily Reforma newspaper yesterday.
He said that the arrest of Raul Salinas was a blow against the whole system, which was born with an agreement among generals in 1928 at the birth of the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI.
Since the mid-1930s, presidents have ruled like kings for six years, then stepped into the background — keeping their mouths shut no matter what criticism was laid against them.
Outgoing presidents and their families — several of whom left office with sizable, mysterious fortunes — were never touched.
"A weak president has destroyed the Mexican 'omerta,' that unwritten rule that says an acting president does not pursue the crimes of the previous administration so that his own will not be pursued later," wrote historian Lorenzo Mever.
Raul Salinas, 48, was held yesterday at the federal prison in Almolaya, west of Mexico City, where security was increased.
The attorney general's office issued a statement saying the motive for the murder was not yet known. Speculation has ranged from political to personal to business disputes.
Almost since taking office, Zedillo had been accused of weakness. With little previous political experience, he was sometimes portrayed as a pale clone of his mentor, Carlos Salinas, a fellow free-market economist.
Zedillo has been unable to stave off the worst economic crisis in a decade and faces a simmering rebellion within the PRI, where hard-liners have resisted efforts to open up the system and give other parties a chance of electoral victory.
"The murder probe has turned into a magnificent political opportunity for Zedillo's government to recover its lost credibility," said Francisco Valdez, a political scientist at the National Autonomous University.
The fall of Raul Salinas also gives Zedillo a chance to prove he is serious about his promise to impose the rule of law in Mexico, a country where the law has generally ignored the sins of the powerful while victimizing the poor.
Russian TV journalist murdered
The Associated Press
MOSCOW — In the most sensational murder in six months, the director of Russia's only national television network was shot and killed Wednesday night as he entered his apartment building.
Vladislav Listyev, 38, a popular television journalist who was head of the Ostankino television company, was shot to death on the building's doorstep. police said.
The shooting followed the shocking bomb-slaying of Dmitry
Kholodov, a newspaper reporter investigating army corruption, in October. Kholodov's killers have not been found.
The motives for Listyev's murder could vary from politics to a clash of business interests, extortion or private revenge. But Ostankino officials suggested it was a contract killing ordered by shady businessmen.
"We have crossed somebody's path," said the chairman of Ostankino's board of directors, Alexander Yakovlev.
Contract killings of businessmen and officials have become widespread in Russia as organized criminal gangs try to establish control over business ventures.
"Any doubts that the mafia is ruling over Moscow and the whole of Russia must disappear after this killing," said Lev Novozhenov, host of the Independent Television's evening newsprogram, Vremechko.
Yakovlev linked the killing to "advertisement wars" surrounding Ostankino.
The Associated Press
Winnie Mandela scrutinized in bribe-taking investigation
JOHANNESBURG, South Africa — A month ago, President Nelson Mandela pledged that his government would root out corruption wherever it was found.
Yesterday, that pursuit led police to the Soweto mansion of Mandela's estranged wife, Winnie, and to the homes and offices of her associates.
Wielding search warrants, the officers raided the properties and seized records in an investigation of alleged bribe-taking and influence-peddling.
Although no warrant has been issued for Mrs. Mandela's arrest, it was the most serious investigation involving a member of Mandela's government. The Democratic and National parties both urged that she be suspended from her post as Deputy Cabinet Minister for arts, culture, science and technology.
Mrs. Mandela was in Abidjan, Ivory Coast, when she heard about the raid. She immediately cut short a 10-day trip to West Africa and was expected back in the country today.
"The allegations the police have made against me leave me astounded and unspeakably angry," Mrs. Mandela said in a statement read by her lawyer. "I see this action, which was very clearly designed to attract the maximum possible publicity, as part of an ongoing campaign to discredit me."
On her lawyer's advice, Mrs. Mandela refused to answer any questions.
Spokesmen for Mandela said the president had been aware of an investigation into his wife's anti-poverty group but had not been told in advance about the raids.
Corruption and kickback scandals were a regular occurrence during South Africa's 45 years of white-minority rule, and Mandela had earlier been criticized for failing to act quickly in recent cases of alleged corruption.
In Pretoria, police Capt. Dave Harrington told reporters that police specializing in financial crime were probing allegations of influence-peddlers and bribe-taking involving Professional Builders, a construction company.
According to Harrington, Mrs. Mandela allegedly received $21,000 paid through the Coordinated Anti-Poverty Program she heads, and she was to receive $9,000 more a month in exchange for securing a contract for Professional to build low-cost housing.
In addition, Mrs. Mandela's daughter, Zinzi,
allegedly would receive half the company shares and Mrs. Mandela's doctor would get an unspecified number, giving Mrs. Mandela effective control of the company, Harrington said.
The offices of Professional Builders and the antipoverty program were also searched yesterday.
Harrington, denying that the raids were a witch hunt, said police had allegations from an informant backed up by documents before they obtained search warrants.
Prosecutors will determine whether to press charges, Harrington said, adding: "No arrest of Mrs. Mandela ... is imminent at this stage."
Yesterday's raids were the latest twist in Mrs. Mandela's roller-coaster political life.
A former social worker with whom Mandela says he fell in love at first sight, Mrs. Mandela was repeatedly banned, put under house arrest, detained, and barished by aparthied police while her husband was spending 27 years in prison.
Then, after Mandela was released, she was convicted of kidnapping, exiled from the mainstream of the African National Congress party and faced repeated allegations of misusing money intended to help poor Blacks.
The police repression helped to mold her pugnacious defiance of authority, an attitude she retains to this day.
It has not always helped her.
In the last month, she was reprimanded by her husband for criticizing his government — an incident that put her on the verge of being fired until she publicly apologized. Meanwhile, half of the board of the ANC Women's League she heads resigned, complaining of highhanded leadership.
Although she appears to be on thin ice with Mandela and her fellow government officials, there is no evidence that Winnie Mandela's popularity has dropped among the country's poor black masses, whose cause she has championed.
That loyalty has carried her through other trials.
That loyalty has carried her through other trials. In 1991, she was convicted of kidnapping in a case involving the beating of four young men by her bodyguards. One of the victims was later found killed. She appealed the conviction and ended up paying a fine instead of serving time in prison.
Citing unspecified differences, Mandela announced in 1992 that he and Winnie were separating.
INDIGO GIRLS
Swamp Ophelia Tour
SATURDAY
APRIL 1, 1995
LIED CENTER
THE UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS
Tickets: $19 w/ KUID, $ 23 general public Tickets available at SUA Box Office 4th Floor. Kansas Union:
4th Floor, Kansas Union:
- March 2-3 with KUID only
- March 4 general public sales begin
- March 6 order by phone - (913)864-3477 For more information call the SUA Box Office at (913) 864-3477