Financial Times on the Future of Democracy in Peru

Humala fans fears of ‘coup with a democratic face’
By Hal Weitzman in Tacna, Peru
Published: April 4 2006 21:42
Financial Times
Ollanta Humala’s supporters in Tacna, Peru’s southernmost city, are in festive mood as they wait for their leader to speak. The air is filled with confetti and balloons, and a woman dressed as a red-and-white cooking pot – the symbol of Mr Humala’s nationalist party – is dancing to the music of a brass band.
The first round of voting in Peru’s presidential election is not until Sunday but the crowd is already celebrating in anticipation of a resounding victory for Mr Humala, who leads the polls by a comfortable margin.
But when Mr Humala begins to speak, the mood quickly shifts to anger. “The powerful have stolen democracy from us,” he shouts to indignant cheers. “They say I am ‘anti-system’. Well, ‘the system’ is the poverty of our people. So yes, I am the anti-system candidate. I am more than that – I am a rebel.”
It is this kind of rhetoric that has rung alarm bells in Peru over the future of democracy under a Humala government. Mario Vargas Llosa, the country’s most famous writer and a former presidential candidate, rec ently gave warning that Peru might be about to experience “a return to authoritarianism, to the systematic violation of human rights and a subjugated press”. Marcial Ayaipoma, the president of Congress, said Mr Humala was plotting “a coup d’état with a democratic face”.
For much of its recent history Peru has alternated between dictatorship and democracy. It returned to democracy in 1980, but the election of Alberto Fujimori as president in 1990 signalled a more autocratic turn, with the dissolution of Congress in 1992.
Mr Fujimori’s “auto-coup” was wildly popular at the time, indicating a widespread contempt for democracy as practised in Peru. Since 2001, democratic institutions have functioned but remain fragile and deeply distrusted. President Alejandro Toledo is profoundly disliked. More than 70 per cent of Peruvians favour more authoritarian government, according to a recent United Nations study.
In part, says Wilfredo Ardito of Lima’s Catholic University, that is because historically Peru has had a string of much-loved authoritarian leaders “who were better than democratic governments in giving people tangible benefits”.
In Tacna, Mr Humala’s speech tapped into a long tradition of revolutionary activity. Peru’s struggle for independence began here in 1811, earning it the title of “the heroic city”. When Chile occupied the city from 1883 to 1929, residents defied a ban by parading the Peruvian flag through the streets. In 1975 Tacna was the starting point for the coup that overthrew Juan Velasco Alvarado, the leftwing dictator whom Mr Humala venerates.
Mr Humala’s own emergence into the public arena occurred 75km away in Locumba, from where in 2000 the candidate, then a lieutenant colonel, launched a failed coup against former president Mr Fujimori. In January 2005 Mr Humala’s younger brother led another abortive uprising in the southern highlands.
Much of the fear about his candidacy is linked to his military background – including allegations of human rights abuses – and the idea that Mr Humala might turn into a “soft dictator” in the mould of Hugo Chávez, the Venezuelan leader who is also a former coup leader.
Mr Humala has fanned those concerns by talk of reinvigorating the armed forces, promising to rewrite the constitution and threatening to dissolve Congress. He said last week that the future of Congress “would be in the hands of a constituent assembly, not mine” but many see that as an attempt to centralise power.
“Humala thinks that to govern is to be Napoleon,” says Julio Cotler, a political analyst in Lima. “He’s mimicking Bolivia and Venezuela, where the governments are using constituent assemblies to establish a monopoly on power.”
For some observers, the election has exposed divergent perceptions of what democracy means in a country where a small upper and middle class has benefited from impressive economic growth in recent years while half the population live on less than $2 (€1.60, £1.10) a day and feel that the state has little to do with them.
Prof Ardito points to Peru’s tradition of social unrest to illustrate the importance of informal politics rather than elections. “Whereas the state thinks in terms of representative demo cracy, the people understand democracy more as a participative process,” he says. “But representative democracy is widely discredited.”
Mr Humala has sought to exploit that by promising to change the system in which “politicians pay attention to the people only at election time” and pledging to hold more referendums.
“We need to end the dictatorship of the rich and the powerful,” says the presidential frontrunner. “Democracy in Peru is purely procedural and electoral. It’s very weak in terms of institutions and citizenship.”