AS crucial midterm elections on July 6th approach, Mexico's former president, Mr Carlos Salinas de Gortari, currently living in Dublin, has hinted at plans to return home.
The suggestion sent powerful ripples through an already tense election campaign.
"I will be back soon," Mr Salinas pledged during a brief conversation with Mexico's current affairs magazine Proceso, last week.
Mr Salinas also said that if he was to give testimony in the criminal case involving his brother Raul, charged with corruption and conspiracy to murder, he would do so only in Mexico and not through the Mexican embassy in Dublin.
Mr Salinas's comments further divided the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), which has held power for 70 years. It now looks set to lose control of both the nation's parliament and capital city, two serious blows to the rulers of the oldest oneparty state in the world.
"Carlos Salinas still pulls the PRI's power strings from his home in Dublin," wrote political analyst Luis Javier Garrido, blaming him for rumours of massive capital flight in the event of an opposition victory.
Mr Salinas has not been charged with any wrongdoing whatsoever during his presidency, but many Mexicans hold him responsible for the dramatic decline in living standards since his departure.
Over the past two years, opposition activists have collected 2 million signatures to a petition demanding that Mr Salinas return and stand trial for "crimes against the Mexican people". Salinas "devil" dolls sell rapidly in Mexico City.
The PRI's struggling mayoral candidate, Mr Alfredo del Mazo, tried to distance himself from Mr Salinas this week after reporters repeatedly raised the issue of his close ties to the former ruler.
"We had nothing in common," Mr del Mazo said while on the campaign trail.
The "denying" of Mr Salinas has become a routine political gesture, yet the current administration was shaped in the image of Mr Salinas's rule, lending credence to claims by him of political scapegoating.
Mr Salinas was Mexico's most popular president until a guerrilla uprising in 1994 and subsequent currency collapse shattered the illusion of economic growth.
The PRI acknowledged during the present election campaign that Mr Salinas was a "burden" to the party, but members are divided on a proposal to expel the former president.
Even if Mr Salinas does return at election time, he will not be among the nation's 54.7 million eligible voters, as the Federal Electoral Institute confirmed that he failed to collect his voter ID card on time.