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Can Vicente Fox turn Mexico around?

By Tony Karon

OK, we'll resist the temptation to invoke the "now for the hard part" cliché for Mexico's new president-elect, Vicente Fox. But that doesn't mean the former Coca-Cola executive is going to have an easy time delivering on his promises to root out crime and corruption, resolve the Chiapas rebellion and spread the benefits of NAFTA. And his quest to persuade Al Gore and George W. Bush to relax immigration controls is unlikely even to make it to the focus-group testing stage. Still, Mexicans have smashed the mold of one-party rule, and after 71 years of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) there's no telling what a new political paradigm could do their system.

Still, a few predictions might be in order.

It may be tough going, but with rats deserting PRI's sinking ship, he has the wind at his back.

A temporary setback for the narcos is probably the best Fox can hope for until the economics of drug trafficking change.

Don't bet on it.

Not for the foreseeable future.

Fox will have many rivers to cross before realizing his promises, but a nation as hungry for change as Mexico was when it went to the polls last weekend may be generous with its honeymoon period. For many Mexicans, after all, it's less important what Fox is than what he isn't -- the PRI.

Copyright © 2000 Time Inc.