After the former Mexican president, Mr Carlos Salinas, defended his administration in the pages of Newsweek magazine, Mexican newspaper editorials, politicians and religious representatives struck back with stinging criticism of his six-year rule from 1988 to 1994.
"We owe Salinas nothing," said Father Onesimo Cepeda, a spokesman for Mexico's Catholic Church. "And we don't want him back here," he added.
In the Newsweek article, Mr Salinas, who is now living in Dublin, claimed credit for improved church-state relations, a decrease in poverty, the detention of drug cartel leaders and a new openness in Mexico's political system, controlled by one party for almost 70 years.
Dr Miguel Angel Granados Chapa, a leading political analyst, dissected Mr Salinas's claims one by one in the popular Reforma newspaper. Official figures for "extreme poverty" stood at 17 million in 1993, wrote Dr Granados Chapa, a figure which has risen to 26 million. Where Mr Salinas claimed to have imprisoned the leaders of all Mexico's drug cartels, Dr Chapa cited several who enjoyed impunity during the Salinas administration.
Last month, Swiss authorities accused Mr Raul Salinas of receiving $500 million from Colombian and Mexican drug cartels.
Mr Salinas's rule was marked by allegations of prison brutality, and hundreds of unpunished political murders. When Mr Salinas left Mexico in April 1995, opposition figures began collecting signatures, demanding he return home and face trial for alleged "vote-rigging, illicit enrichment and repression of opposition activists."
The signature campaign collected two million names, despite the beating and imprisonment of several name collectors, one of whom was hospitalised after a severe beating on New Year's Eve 1996.
Mr Salinas's attempt to defend his rule was eclipsed the next day when Mexican authorities announced the capture in Australia of Mr Carlos Cabal Peniche, a multimillionaire accused of corrupt bank procedures during the Salinas period, who has been on the run since 1994.
AFP adds: Mexico's Attorney General's Office said a judge had opened a new case against Mr Raul Salinas, alleging he stole some $4.3 million in public funds during his brother's administration.