Peru Election 2006

Maxwell A. Cameron
The Globe and Mail
April 8, 2006

MAXWELL CAMERON
Globe and Mail Update
Lima — The appearance of a new figure in Peruvian politics, Ollanta Humala, has led to speculation this Andean nation might be poised to join South America’s tilt to the left. If he wins the presidency, will he take Peru in the same direction as Venezuela under Hugo Chavez and Bolivia under Evo Morales?
A self-styled nationalist who first achieved prominence in an unsuccessful military rebellion against then-president Alberto Fujimori, Mr. Humala is currently in first place in the electoral race, with about 33-per-cent support among voters. He is likely to make it into a runoff election, which is required in Peru if no candidate wins 50 per cent plus one vote on SundayApril 9. The result of a runoff with conservative Lourdes Flores or former president Alan Garcia would be hard to predict.
The real story in this election is not the shift to the left by the voters, but their rejection of a dysfunctional political system. The campaign has become a contest over who can best capture the mood of repudiating the status quo. In this context, the collapse of the once-formidable Peruvian left has created a vacuum that has made the rise of Mr. Humala possible. What he represents is anyone’s guess.
Mr. Humala is an amateur with neither a coherent party organization nor experience in government. After a rapid ascent in the polls between October, 2005, and January, 2006, his campaign stalled in late January as a result of scandals and factionalism. His reputation was tarnished by credible accusations that in 1992 he was “Captain Carlos.” Carlos was a commander in the Alto Huallaga region who committed human-rights abuses in the war with the Shining Path, a fanatical revolutionary group whose “prolonged people’s war” claimed close to 70,000 lives between 1980 and 2000. Yet the criminal allegations have not derailed Mr. Humala’s candidacy.
Why have the accusations of human-rights abuses done so little damage to Mr. Humala’s campaign? First, many voters do not trust the media; they believe witnesses can be bought, and that the charges are part of a political campaign. Second, many people believe human-rights abuses were unavoidable and necessary in the fight with the Shining Path, and Mr. Humala casts himself as a patriotic soldier who dutifully followed orders. Finally, the Peruvian left – once a major political force – has splintered into three or four mini-parties. If the polls are right, not a single left-wing party will pass the 4-per-cent threshold necessary to win seats in congress. This vacuum on the left helps explain the sudden upsurge of Mr. Humala.
Mr. Humala claims inspiration from Juan Velasco Alvarado, the populist and nationalist general who implemented land reform and worker-run co-operatives as part of an effort to establish a corporatist-authoritarian political system in the 1970s. Unlike Velasco, however, Mr. Humala is unlikely to alter basic property rights. His most radical policy proposals include renegotiating contracts with foreign enterprises and refusing to sign a recently negotiated free-trade agreement with the United States.
This is tepid stuff compared to the radicalism of the 1970s and 1980s, but Mr. Humala is unlikely to be able to pursue a more radical agenda. Peru has neither the indigenous social movements that brought Mr. Morales to power in Bolivia’s December, 2005, election, nor the disciplined and coherent party organizations that have sustained the left in Chile, Uruguay, and Brazil.
Peru has miserable poverty, gross inequality, and a growing sense of injustice and hopelessness. The fact Mr. Humala has captured the loyalty of one-third of the electorate proves that the status quo is not working for many Peruvians. Wealth created by years of robust export-led growth has not trickled down to the shantytowns, highland villages, or rural areas. The poor feel more abandoned today than under Mr. Fujimori. They will tilt toward any candidate who incarnates their frustration. Their vote is not for a particular ideology, but against a system that is cynically indifferent to their suffering – except at election time.
Maxwell A. Cameron is a professor of political science at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver.