Mexican President-Elect to Start Naming Cabinet

At last Vicente Fox Quesada is expected to begin announcing the choices for his cabinet, on Wednesday.

With the announcements, Mr. Fox, who as the first person in 71 years to defeat the Institutional Revolutionary Party becomes president in 10 days, aims to shatter the strength of the old-boy networks that dominated politics. He has pledged to chose men and women from a variety of viewpoints and party affiliations.

At a news conference, Mr. Fox is generally expected the appoint a leftist academic, Jorge G. Casta?eda, as foreign minister and will try to keep Wall Street calm by selecting an eminent economist as treasury secretary. He is Francisco Gil D¨Şaz, who is committed to upholding the free- market changes made by the departing president, Ernesto Zedillo.

The selections are a result of an extraordinary nationwide search that involved as much input from head hunters and advice from Mr. Fox's rivals as it did from leaders of his own conservative National Action Party. The process has been subject to numerous delays and intense competition on the transition team.

Because Mr. Fox is known as more of a pragmatist than a party stalwart, members of his party have been quietly nervous about whether their leaders would be given prominent positions. Women's groups have pressured Mr. Fox to include a respectable number of their leaders.

Leftist leaders of the Democratic Revolutionary Party refused to accept any positions in the cabinet.





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