Author: Michael Ha

Fernando Henrique Cardoso, ex presidente de Brasil

Mario Vargas Llosa
El Comercio
18 de junio del 2006

Rapporteur’s Report on a Round Table Discussion at the Instituto de Estudios Peruanos (IEP), Lima, June 9, 2006.
Maxwell A. Cameron
June 16, 2006
Photos by J. Bazo
A round table discussion was held at the Instituto de Estudios Peruanos (IEP) to assess the process and outcome of the second round of the Peruvian presidential election which was held on June 4, 2006. Martin Tanaka, director of the IEP, and Maxwell A. Cameron, Professor of political science at the University of British Columbia, led off the discussion.

For a summary of Cameron’s comments, click here.
Martin Tanaka said the results of the second round of the election left a strong impression on many observers, yet some aspects of this impression deserve reconsideration in light of the first round. The most powerful image from the second round was a map of a country divided between north and south, and between the coast and the sierra; Ollanta Humala won a majority of Peru’s departments, especially in the south, while Alan Garcia captured the north; Lourdes Flores did best in Lima, and her votes were transferred to Garcia. The geography of the vote created the impression of a powerful fracture along class, region, and ethnic lines, divisions that can be traced to the 19th century and earlier.
Tanaka cautioned against failing to delineate how far this image of a fractured nation holds true, and he argued for examining the election results in both rounds in all their nuance and complexity. When the second round election is placed in context, it reveals both ancient fractures and new cleavages, changes and continuities. In some ways, the results of the second round in 2001 and 2006 are very similar. The vote for Alejandro Toledo and Peru Posible in 2001, and the support for Ollanta Humala and the Union Por el Peru in 2006, are virtual mirror images—though much has rightly been made of the larger standard deviation from the mean in the 2006 election. For example, the extraordinarily high vote for UPP in Ayacucho, 83 percent, is new.

Martin Tanaka
The biggest difference lies in an observation made by Alfredo Torres, head of the APOYO survey firm, prior to the second round. Torres suggested that the voters of Cusco have served as a bellwether for national election results; in Peru’s modern democratic history Cusco has never been on the losing side of an election. This, however, has changed with the 2006 election. Cusco voted for the loser. The election also casts the importance of Lima in a new light. Prior to the first round, some observers emphasized the electoral weight of Lima. While the candidate preferred by a plurality of Lima’s voters, Lourdes Flores, did not make it into the second round, Lima was, nevertheless, decisive in arbitrating between the two candidates who did.
Carmen Rosa Balbi agreed that there was a difference between the first and second rounds of the election, but she perceived the different in terms of how the rise of Ollanta Humala changed the political agenda of the campaign. Until the end of 2005, there was an ostensible consensus on the success of the existing economic model and on the need for continuity in macroeconomic management. Polls appeared to show that there was a center-right majority in the country; some opinion leaders suggested that to question the economic model was irrational. Little by little, during the course of the campaign between January and April, this center-right common sense began to change, producing a modification in the agenda. In part, this change reflected the fact that for part of 2005, Lourdes Flores was the most active and visible candidate on the campaign trail. She set the tone for the election because she was the first to start campaigning; the tone changed when other candidates entered the fray.

Carmen Rosa Balbi
As the campaign unfolded, and Ollanta Humala rose in the polls, the successes of the economic model began to be questioned with increasing insistence. Issues like royalties paid by foreign firms, and the need to audit and review contracts with foreign businesses, were placed on the agenda by Humala, and then picked up by other candidates. There was a notable radicalization of the message delivered by Alan Garcia, who echoed Humala’s insistence on the need to revise contracts with foreign companies. Humala did not win the election, but he did contribute to shifting Peru’s political agenda to the left. The fact that he won 47 percent of the vote suggests a turning point has been reached in Peru.
Alberto Adrianzen agreed with the view that Humala had achieved a lot against great odds. As he put it, “Humala received a very high vote in spite of all those who opposed him: his father, his mother, his brothers, Jaime Bayly and most of the media, APRA, UN, Fujimori, the United States, the Church. Never before has their been such a solid front against a candidate.” The opposition to Humala went so far as to paint him as a “fascist,” or as 21st century Sanchez Cerro. Carmen Rosa Balbi seconded Adrianzen’s criticisms of the media, saying that she could not recall such unfair coverage of a candidate in any previous Peruvian election.
Adrianzen also argued that Lima sank Humala. Remove Lima from Peru, Adrianzen argued, and Humala won the election by about 400,000 votes. Lima gave Garcia the advantage he needed to win. Humala won in the highlands and the jungle. What is more, according to Adrianzen, the people who supported Humala voted for him not as an act of protest or out of bad humour alone: he was the political option for those on the other side of Peru’s geographic, regional, social and economic fractures. In the “Indian stain” (the highland areas inhabited by the indigenous people of Peru), Humala received around 70 percent of the vote. His vote was highest in those areas, like in Ayacucho, where there was the most violence during the war with the Shining Path revolutionary movement. Peru may be witnessing the birth of a new political party, a process reminiscent of the 1930s when APRA emerged. Humala has changed the political map.

Alberto Adrianzen
APPA won with conservative votes, according to Adrianzen. Support for APRA was as high as 86 percent in affluent districts like San Isidro in Lima. APRA won with the votes of those who can be expected to benefit from the Free Trade Agreement with the United States. Fabiola Bazo challenged this view, noting that APRA won in poor districts as well. In fact, APRA won in every singled district of Lima. On one point everyone is agreed: the election was a divisive one, and the level of tension as very high. As a result, there was a decline in blank votes between the first and second rounds, contrary to what many expected, as well as an increase in the number of spoiled votes.
Looking toward the future, Adrianzen predicted “serious opposition,” and not just in parliament. “Happily,” he said, “we’re finished with good manners.” According to Adrianzen, the “good manners” of the political class conceal conflicts and opposed interests. Humala can be expected to push his agenda through a strategy of confrontation that will be unlike in the past, when leaders challenged each other in public and colluded in private. Humala may be more like Evo Morales—with all due recognition for the important differences between Bolivia and Peru.
Marisa Remy noted that Humala had raised his vote between the first and second rounds from 30 to 47 percent; he came within a few points of winning. She noted the diverse projects within his movement.

Marisa Remy
Taylor Boas addressed the issues raised by Max Cameron concerning changes in institutional rules to widen participation in elections, especially for rural voters. He said that changes in rules generally benefits someone and hurt someone else. In a fluid polity like Peru, it may be harder to detect who will benefit from alterations in political rules, and this can facilitate change. In principle, however, it is not hard to see that a change like the elimination of the fine for not voting would probably affect most those for whom the fine matters the most—the poor.
Boas observed the relatively low salience of regionalism in campaign appeals in the election. He said that in election campaigns there are both elements of supply and demand; candidates can emphasize certain cleavages—class or ethnicity, for example—to the detriment of others. In the case of this election, the regional cleavage was not the focus of much of the campaigning. While he agreed with other participants about significant differences across regions in terms of voting results, and that this could be interpreted as a high rather than low salience in the election per se, his point was that differences between regions are also frequently differences between social class or ethnicity, and the latter were the cleavages that candidates actually emphasized during the campaign. Aside from the use of occasional epithets like “the candidate of Miraflores and San Isidro” (which really means candidate of the rich), no one really claimed that they represented the concerns of one region in particular, or that their opponent represented one region in particular.
Boas disagreed with the claim by Balbi concerning the rejection of neoliberalism. He said the economic model has always been part of the debate in Peru, and in the past it has been heavily questioned by the Marxist left. Humala has continued this, with, perhaps, the difference being that he has combined rejection of neoliberalism with anti-system opposition. That is, the “outsider” candidates who have in the past won the votes captured by Humala in this election, Alejandro Toledo and Alberto Fujimori, were advocates of neoliberal politics.

Taylor Boas
Rici Lake agreed with the assertion by Martin Tanaka concerning the similarities between the 2001 and the 2006 elections. In 2001 Peru Posible won about 60 percent of the votes of the south, while in 2006 Humala won closer to 70 percent. The biggest difference is the decline in the number of blank votes. Another major difference is that Toledo won in 2001 thanks to votes from the south, and Fujimori won in 1990 thanks to the same pattern of votes. In 2006, however, the candidate the south supported lost. The political map is not different, it is the same map as before, except that the left has changed. Toledo was elected by the south and failed to deliver his promises to help the south. After this election, the south does not have to oppose its own winner—it can oppose a winner it did not support in the first place.

Jim Rudolph and Rici Lake
Carmen Rosa Balbi agreed with Adrianzen regarding the media bias against Ollanta Humala. She said that the treatment of Humala was unlike anything seen in Peru before. Turning to the prospects for the future, Balbi raised the possibility of an alliance or coalition between APRA and the UPP. Such a coalition would guarantee nearly 90 votes. However, Humala and his inner circle appear inclined to reject the possibility of an alliance and instead seek to lead the opposition to the APRA government; this attitude has begun to produce divisions within UPP (between Carlos Tapia, for example, and Carlos Torres Caro). Balbi suggested that Humala’s refusal to congratulate Garcia on his victory suggests that he does not understand that there is more to this ritual than a “media show.” Peru is a country traumatized by violence. Offering congratulations to the winner is a desirable demonstration of conviviality.
Moreover, Garcia does not represent the right; the specious idea that he won with votes “lent” to him by the right was aptly dismissed by Garcia when he said that his second round votes were lent by the voters not by the right-wing candidate they supported in the first round. An intransigent opposition by Humala would lead to a continuation of polarization in a country in which protest has not been channeled by social movements, where conflict has been expressed politically but remains unorganized socially.

Martin Tanaka took issue with the idea that media bias against a candidate has never been worse than in this election, saying that in the role of the media in 1990 was worse. According to Boas, the worst case, by far, was 2000, when Fujimori’s security advisor Vladimiro Montesinos bought direct government control over the media. The comportment of the media might have been worse in 1990, though it was probably not as clear a case of net bias against one particular candidate.
Tanaka also insisted that the votes for Garcia were not just based on fear of Humala—thought this may have been true for sectors of the elite. Many voters in Lima supported Garcia because they were won over by promises such as the commitment to support microenterprises. Similarly, voters who did not share Humala’s opposition to the Free Trade Agreement with the United States would have been inclined to support Garcia. With respect to the sort of opposition that Humala will build, Tanaka suggested that the jury is still out. It is not yet clear whether his opposition will be loyal.
Alberto Adrianzen argued that the big issue to address for the future is not governability but representation. The task for Humala is to construct an opposition, based on a set of positions distinct from those of the government. The consensus that has to be built in Peru is not one that will be forged in dialogue round tables among technocrats, which have little to do with everyday life for many people. In politics, conflicting positions and interests need to be represented, yet for many Peruvians the systems fails to represent them at all.
Natalia Sobrevilla picked up the issue of the historical cleavages that have divided Peru, arguing that the north south cleavage can be traced to the importance Cusco has retained over time. She suggested, however, that the headway made by Humala in places like Cajamarca in the second round suggest a cleavage that cuts more along the coast versus highlands divide. The south as a region have never really been articulated. There are old rivalries between Cusco and Arequipa, between Tacna and Moquegua, for example. The efforts to create macro-regions stumbled on this reality. Sobrevilla suggested that the elections for regional and municipal governments in November will provide a measure of Humala’s staying power, and whether he has the organization and bases necessary to build a sustained movement.

Natalia Sobrevilla
Sobrevilla also reflected on the ways in which history is used in contemporary politics for various purposes. For example, the effort to “refound the republic” harkens back to most of Peru’s republican history and in this particular case appeals to memories of the confederation. Humala himself has been innocent of much of this, though his father has been more explicit in making historical references. She also stressed the impressive level of support won by Humala in this election, and argued that the 47 percent of the vote won by the UPP candidate was well in excess of the thirds in which the vote has been traditional divided and the quarter of the vote that the right commands.
Marisa Remy responded to Boas’ question regarding the critique of neoliberalism. She argued that neoliberalism has been uncritically accepted for most of the period between about 1990 and 2002. The media are linked to economically powerful groups that have not only muted criticism but have even demonized conflict within the democratic process on over fundamental questions like the viability of the economic model.
Fabiola Bazo wrapped up the discussion with two anecdotes showing how the APRA party is perceived by voters. The first was a conversation with a taxi driver who expressed his intention to vote for APRA because he did well in the first Garcia government as a money exchanger in the blackmarket on “Creole Wall Street.” She also gave an example of residents of San Isidro who were victims of the economic crisis of the late 1980s and, as a result, voted for Humala. These provide illustrations of the complexity of the processes leading to voting decisions.

Fabiola Bazo and Max Cameron
The main conclusions from this round table discussion were:
1. There are important contrasts between the first and second round results. Analysts should be careful about drawing inferences about how the political map has been redrawn based on the results of the first or second round in isolation. There are continuities between the results of both first and second rounds in 2001 and 2006. The biggest difference is that in the 2006 election the south voted for the losing side.
2. The nature of the opposition that will emerge from this election is still uncertain. Humala can be expected to be a tough opponent, provided he has the staying power and can build on the momentum of the election. Whether his opposition will be loyal or not is unclear. That said, conflict is part of democracy and there should be no presumption that only parliamentary opposition is legitimate.
3. There was some disagreement on whether to interpret the victory by Garcia as a victory for the right or the left. On the one hand, Garcia clearly captured right-wing support and his success in Lima tilted the balance in his favor. On the other hand, he won support from across a broad spectrum of voters in Lima and elsewhere. In general, opposition to neoliberalism appears to have intensified in this election largely as a result of the emergence of Humala.
4. Media bias was an issue in this election, though analysts had different views on whether bias was worse than in previous elections. In general, Humala was seen as having performed exceptionally well given his treatment by the media.
5. Analysts confront a major challenge to sort out the continuities and differences between this and previous elections. It is often said that Peru is a fractured nation, yet the specific fault lines, like tectonic plates, bear stress and shift in often unpredictable ways. This preliminary round table could only touch on some of the key questions. Further research, involving systematic and interdisciplinary efforts, will be necessary to decipher all the hidden lessons from this important electoral process.

Maxwell A. Cameron
June 9, 2006
It would be hard to understate the success of the second round presidential election on June 4, 2006. In the week prior to the election there was violence on the campaign trail and rumours of possible unrest in certain parts of the country if one of the political parties in contention lost. Yet election day came and the voters turned out in large numbers. They were orderly and peaceful. Yes, there was a confrontation in Arequipa after the polls closed, and there were isolated incidents elsewhere in the country, but by and large the election unfolded uneventfully. On 9:30 pm with over 77 percent of the vote counted, preliminary results were announced by the National Office of Electoral Processes; it was clear that Alan Garcia had emerged as the winner. There was no uproar, nor allegations of fraud. The reservists did not pour into the streets in protest. Everyone accepted the outcome as final.
The election is a big step in the consolidation of Peru’s democracy. Yet it also revealed huge divisions in Peruvian society, and it has exposed the limits of the Peruvian state. One of the biggest divisions is between town and countryside. In rural areas, voters sometimes have to walk for days to get to the polls. Others use public transport, but find that bus companies raise their fares to gouge customers on the weekend of the election. Rural voters often lack basic information about how to vote, or even where and when to vote.
Even more dramatically, many people in rural areas lack basic legal identification necessary to vote. The problem is most severe in the case of rural women. In some rural families, only the head of the household gets an identity card, leaving the rest of the family invisible to the state. A major reason for this is expense. Although it costs less than $10 (31 soles) to get an identity card, this is serious cash for those whose involvement in the cash economy is minimal. It is estimated that as over a million voters lack identity cards, and a quarter of a million people do not even have birth certificates.
Add to this the fact that many rural voters are illiterate and the problem is even more acute. Illiteracy is very high in rural areas. Statistics on this are unreliable, because there is no test of literacy when citizens take out their identity cards. People are merely asked whether they are literate. Rural schools are poor, and older rural inhabitants were schooled many years ago. They may have been taught to read and write at some point, but they are generally functionally illiterate today. Since members of voting stations are drawn by lottery, some of these people wind up becoming election officials on election day. The nice thing about lotteries is that they are democratic, but they also assume a basic level of civil competence. Without this competence, all sorts of problems may occur on election day and can give rise to material errors in the completion of voting returns. In some cases such errors can result returns from entire voting booths (which typically have around 200 voters) being annulled.
Add to this the complexity of the first round election, in which there were over 20 parties competing in three separate elections. Each member of the polling booth had to sign a form to install the poll, to carry out the scrutiny, and to close the poll. These forms were filled in at least 5 times (maybe more if there are lots of scrutineers who want copies), and had to be competed separately for each of the three elections. This meant signing at least 45 forms. In the first round, many members of polling booths were at work by 7 am and still signing forms by 11 pm in the evening—with only the most minimal sustenance provided during the day. The greater dispatch of the second round, and the speed with which results came in, demonstrates the difference that simplicity in the ballot can make.
The problem of the rural voter creates a huge opportunity for state building and the promotion of civil society. For example, peasant confederations could be used to distribute didactic material on voting procedures. Rural radio stations reach out to indigenous voters in their own native tongues, and they could be used to disseminate information about voting. In the process, resources could be channeled into rural areas and linkages built with rural communities. Peasant schools could be used for educating voters about the electoral process. A campaign to document voters would be a big step forward in promoting the presence of the state in rural areas, and the international community could be enlisted to provide resources. The state could also do a better job of getting voting stations into rural areas. More voting stations would help rural voters, especially if they were open for longer hours.
There is a notable contrast between the dramatic conditions that confront voters in rural areas and the hesitancy of officialdom to undertake steps that would make things easier for rural voters. For example, the Peruvian constitution is interpreted to mean that elections can only be held on one single day. This means there are no advance polls, nor can votes be submitted by mail. Advance polls are not logistically hard to organize, and they would take a lot of pressure off the entire system. The postal vote has been used by many countries around the world, and is not difficult to implement. Yet such simple reforms are met with indifference or resistance in Lima by officials and even by non-government organizations.
Electoral officials in Lima debate subtle distinctions such as whether election law permits a ballot to be “single” or “double,” or whether a general election is a single event or three separate elections (presidential, congressional, and Andean parliament). The various bodies responsible for the electoral process—the body that organizes the election, the body that resolves legal disputes, and the body that manages the voter list—wrangle at length over issues jurisdiction and competence. These disputes occupy much of the attention of officialdom, distracting them from focusing on more concrete issues like getting polling stations closer to voters or providing adequate training to the personnel in charge of polling stations. Last year a law was passed enabling the military and police to vote, yet the changes necessary to put this into practice were neglected. As a result, many soldiers were unable to vote because they were under orders to provide security for polling stations on election day. A postal vote would benefit the armed forces, as well as rural voters. It would also help people in jail who have not yet been found guilty. It would be one thing to dismiss the idea of a postal ballot if the state was capable of guaranteeing the vote to everyone legally entitled to vote, it is quite another when the state is denying the suffrage to those entitled to vote under the constitution.
Two aspects of the election process seem to cause serious distress and yet the willingness of electoral officials to address them is next to nil. One is the fact that voting is not only obligatory—the failure to vote results in a heavy fine. This punitive measure is especially harsh on poor people, and is bitterly resented. Why should voting—the ultimate act of popular sovereignty—be legally required? It would be one thing if the state were able to place polling stations near all voters and enumerate all those citizens eligible to vote. But if the Peruvian state is so deficient that it cannot provide legal identity to all its citizens, how can it insist that all should vote? Worse still, the fear of getting fined is a source of reluctance to acquire identity cards.
The second aspect of the electoral process that is unusual is the practice of destroying ballots once they are counted. As a result, recounts are impossible. Instead, when material errors appear in the voting returns, rather than recounting the votes, judicial decisions have to be made about whether voting returns are legally valid. If scrutineers of a political party challenge the results of a particular voting booth, it is not possible to go back and recount the votes. Rather, electoral official must decide whether to accept or reject the voting return. Advocates of this system suggest that the current system is better than retaining the ballots, since arguing over 83,000 voting returns (some 40 percent of which were challenged in the first round of this election) is more efficient than arguing over 16.5 million votes. The difference, however, is that all one can do with voting returns is decide whether they are legally valid. With original ballots the issue is not one of interpretation but one of simple recounting.
Another example of a regulation that was made by officials that simply cannot be enforced is the prohibition on the dissemination of polls one week before the election. In the age of the Internet, it is not surprising that the results of the polls conducted in the last week—and there are many such polls—circulate by a host of means and often wind up on the Internet reported by foreign services and returning to Peru. The law would be more enforceable if it prohibited the dissemination of polls for 24 hours or 48 hours before the election day, but one week is simply too long.
Political scientists Alfred Stepan and Juan Linz have argued that there can be no democracy where there is no state. The electoral process in Peru offers opportunities for state building that could, at the same time, reinforce democracy.

Jorge Castañeda
Daily Times (Pakistan)
June 8, 2006