HISTORIC CHANCE

Fox Can Transform Mexico's Corrupt Rule

Vicente Fox, who on Dec. 1 will become the first opposition president in
Mexico since 1929, faces a historic opportunity to transform the corrupt
rule that long has hampered his country. Judging from his early actions
after winning last month's election, Fox recognizes this extraordinary
chance to overhaul Mexico's ineffective, and often compromised, institutions.

Encouragingly, Fox has declared that strengthening the rule of law will be
one of his top priorities, along with creating jobs and improving health
care and education. This means he must invigorate not only the battle
against Mexico's notoriously powerful drug cartels but also reform a
judicial system that is rife with corruption.

To address this immense challenge, Fox's aides said last week he will
eliminate the Federal Judicial Police, the discredited arm of the attorney
general's office. For years, various top officials in the attorney
general's office and the Federal Judicial Police have been tainted by ties
to drug traffickers. The most celebrated was the very chief of Mexico's
anti-narcotics effort, Gen. Jesus Gutierrez Rebollo, who was found to be on
the payroll of drug dealers.

Fox would replace the Federal Judicial Police with a Federal Agency of
Investigation, modeled after the FBI, which would report to a new federal
prosecutor general rather than the attorney general. A thorough dismantling
of the long-troubled attorney general's office may be required to break the
corrupt ties that drug traffickers have established over the years.

The aim of the Federal Agency of Investigation is to develop a professional
cadre of top law enforcement officials immune to bribes and other forms of
corruption that currently subvert the rule of law. Creating such an
organization will not be easy, considering the enormous payments and
threats of violence that the narcotraficantes employ to exert control over
authorities at all levels of government.

Fox also has signaled his intention to remove the military from narcotics
enforcement functions, in accordance with Mexico's constitution. This goal,
which would shift responsibility for counter-drug efforts to civilian
agencies, poses a difficult dilemma.

The risk is that the military's constructive role in interdicting narcotics
shipments and eradicating elicit marijuana and opium crops will be lost --
to the benefit of traffickers -- unless a strong civilian replacement is
developed. Plainly, it will take several years before Mexico will be able
to field a new force that is capable of filling the role now played by the
army and navy.

Fox has made it clear that he intends to strengthen the level of
cooperation between American and Mexican authorities. In general, he has
taken a less nationalistic approach to the binational struggle against drug
dealers. Our hope is that his historic change of government will open the
door to expanded opportunities for the United States and Mexico to work
cooperatively against the common scourge of drug trafficking.