Peru Election 2006

Maxwell A. Cameron
April 30, 2006
Alan Garcia wants to take the dispute with Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez to the bank.
The candidate for APRA says that the choice in this election is between Chavez and Peru. Alluding to Ollanta Humala, Garcia said: “I believe we now have a candidate, that of Mr. Chavez, and we must choose between Chavez and Peru, nothing more; we must choose between interference and the right of the Peruvian people to self-determination.”
Garcia criticized the passivity of Ollanta Humala in the face of the most recent interference of Chavez in Peruvian politics. Humala, he said, subscribes to a “false nationalism.”
Garcia warned that Chavez has an imperial appetite, but he has made a mistake by picking on Peru. Perhaps Chavez can intimidate leaders in other places, he said, but “I am not someone to submit to yelling and insults.” He pointed out that the Peruvian constitution says that the president personifies the nation. By calling President Alejandro Toledo and Alan Garcia “alligators from the same well” Chavez offends the Peruvian people, said Garcia.
Garcia also said he has not provoked Chavez. All he has done, he said, is to clearly define the differences between his own positions and the statements made by the Venezuelan president concerning Peru. “I did not attack him. For some time Chavez has interfered in Peruvian politics. He has become a person accustomed to barbarism, to insults against he who personifies Peru, which is Mr. Toledo, against the Peruvian people, against a candidate, and finally against me.”

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Maxwell A. Cameron
April 29, 2006
Alan Garcia has been doing everything possible to pick a fight with Hugo Chavez, and, in the end, Chavez could not resist responding to Garcia’s attacks. The enmity between the two leaders goes back a long way. Accion Democratica (AD) is APRA’s counterpart in Venezuela. Hugo Chavez led a coup attempt against the AD government of President Carlos Andres Perez in 1992. Alan Garcia and Carlos Andres Perez are compadres.
Garcia has been launching torpedoes at Chavez for the better part of a fortnight. First, he attacked Chavez for pulling out of the Andean Community. On Thursday, April 20, Garcia called Chavez “Anti-Bolivarian.” “This is the second time in Latin American history that a Venezuelan government has broken the unity that the Liberator Simon Bolivar sought for our Andean republics” he said. According to Garcia, Chavez was following the footsteps of the dictator José Antonio Páez who separated Venezuela from the “Gran Colombia” in the 19th century. “The tomb of the Liberator Simon Bolivar in Santa Martha must be suffering certain commotions at this moment.”
Chavez did not respond. So, two days later, Garcia renewed his attack. “It hurts me that Venezuela proposes to abandon the Andean Community when it was a Venezuelan, the Liberator Simon Bolivar, who called for a union of Andean republics.” He then said that Chavez “is not only killing Bolivar, he is causing his country to go backward economically.”
Still, there was no response from Chavez. However, Evo Morales joined Chavez in criticizing Peru’s negotiation of a free trade agreement, calling outgoing President Alejandro Toledo a “traitor.” Garcia responded on Monday, April 24, criticizing the “grave error” of Chavez and his “pupils” in the rest of South America, including Evo Morales and Ollanta Humala, for undermining the Andean Community. He called Morales’ comments “feverish.” Garcia also said Humala should not try to avoid a debate by proposing, instead, a series of debates between the members of the teams of each party. “If he does not want to debate, it would be simpler to debate with the person who inspires and leads him” said Garcia in allusion to Chavez.
Finally, on April 28, Chavez blasted back. “We will not have relations with a president of this nature, with a thief, a cardsharp. Imagine in one of these summits, he might come and steal my money!” Chávez compared Garcia with Carlos Andres Perez. “It would be a curse for this robber to return. Look what happened when Carlos Andres Perez returned. He [Garcia] is the Carlos Andres Perez of Peru.” [Note: CAP was impeached for corruption]. Chavez went on to exhort Ollanta Humala to win. “God free Peru from a bandit such as this president,” he said of Garcia.
Chavez’s open endorsement of Humala and his attacks on Garcia are likely to benefit Garcia. Humala said Chavez’s comments were lamentable, but that Garcia had been looking for a fight with Chavez. He said the dispute is between Garcia and Chavez. This reaction was taken by editorialists as tepid.
The attacks by Chavez gave Garcia a chance to play victim while shifting the media spotlight off Humala. “I reject in the name of the Peruvian people the permanent interference of this person, Hugo Chavez, in the politics of Peru and I think he is doing a lot of damage to his protégé Ollanta Humala” said Garcia. He then pointed out the hypocrisy of not wanting countries like Peru, Colombia, Ecuador and Bolivia to trade with other nations while Venezuela’s biggest customer is the United States. He said Venezuela sells $40 billion dollars in petroleum to the US, and has 17,000 gas pumps in its northern neighbour. “With what moral authority, after selling all his petroleum to the US, does he come to tell us: you are traitors if you trade with the US.” Concerning the accusations of corruption, Garcia said: “He responds in the only way that a primitive being like he knows how. Insulting and treating me in the worst manner.”
For more background, see Gran Combo Club: Entre Chávez al norte y Morales al sur (2) and Entre Chávez al norte y Morales al sur (3)

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Por Aldo Panfichi
Coyuntura: Analisis Economico y Social de Actualidad, No. 6 (marzo-abril 2006)
Universidad Catolica del Peru
Durante los últimos años, el término outsider ha sido usado frecuentemente en la política peruana para referirse a aquellos candidatos que provienen de fuera del sistema político y obtienen resonantes victorias electorales, apelando a la representación sociológica y emocional de los pobres y excluidos. El caso paradigmático es Alberto Fujimori, quien a inicios de la década de 1990 inspiró la popularización de este término, pero también outsider ha sido utilizado para referirse a los alcaldes Belmont y Castañeda Lossio, al presidente Toledo y últimamente a Ollanta Humala. En este itinerario, el término ha ido oscureciendo sus elementos constitutivos, para ser utilizarse de manera indiscriminada haciendo referencia a todos los políticos que no pertenecen a los partidos establecidos. En un país en el que estos partidos son minoritarios, resulta, entonces, que la mayoría de los políticos pueden ser calificados como outsiders.
En realidad, el término political outsider tiene una larga tradición en la ciencia política norteamericana, donde se lo utiliza en sentido opuesto a political insider. Este último término se refiere a aquellos dirigentes, consultores u operadores políticos que por sus contactos y vínculos de confianza con las elites permanecen siempre cerca de los círculos de poder. Un outsider se caracteriza, precisamente, por no tener estos contactos y por estar excluido de las redes e instituciones que reproducen el poder en una sociedad. Según este punto de vista, lo que definiría a un outsider es su condición de excluido, y el hecho de provenir de fuera del sistema político —del Estado y de los partidos—.
Teniendo en consideración estos criterios, planteamos que es un error considerar al comandante Ollanta Humala como un outsider, debido a que él proviene de una de las instituciones más antiguas del Estado —«partido» dicen algunos—: las Fuerzas Armadas. Una institución que ha jugado roles fundamentales en la construcción de la nación, y de la que han surgido héroes y mitos fundadores de la patria que han buscado cohesionar a la heterogénea población peruana desde los orígenes mismos de la República. Incluso los traumas causados por las guerras —sobre todo la del Pacifico— constituyen hasta hoy un componente esencial de la identidad nacional y una variable política bastante sensible, como la ultima campaña electoral lo demuestra. Basta mencionar el papel jugado por los militares en la organización de ceremonias cívico-patrióticas como la jura de la bandera y otras, que se desarrollan los domingos en casi todas las plazas públicas del interior del país, y a las que asisten autoridades políticas, vecinos notables y representantes de la sociedad civil local.
La participación de militares en los altos cargos políticos es también una característica permanente en nuestra historia. No se los puede considerar outsiders o excluidos del sistema político, ya que los números no admiten confusión. Entre 1821 y 2005, el Perú ha tenido 74 presidentes, 68,9% de los cuales —51 de ellos— han sido militares: 8 mariscales, 34 generales, 6 coroneles, 2 tenientes coroneles y un contraalmirante. Durante el siglo XX, la tradición se mantuvo con 11 gobiernos liderados por militares, además de una nutrida presencia castrense en los gabinetes civiles. Hasta el momento, ningún presidente ha sido comandante, lo cual no quiere decir que no lo pueda ser ahora o en el futuro. La alta participación de los militares en la política ha llevado a los sociólogos holandeses Koonings y Kruijt a proponer el término ejército político para referirse al caso peruano. El término alude a aquellas instituciones militares que consideran su participación o control sobre la política interna y los asuntos de gobierno como parte central de sus funciones legítimas y patrióticas.
Precisamente, estas fueron las razones que se esgrimieron en 1968 para justificar el golpe de Estado y la instalación del Gobierno Revolucionario de las Fuerzas Armadas liderado por el general Juan Velasco Alvarado. Un gobierno militar nacionalista y reformista que quebró las bases económicas y políticas del sistema oligárquico, y busco limitar la influencia del capital extranjero en favor de un Estado y una economía nacional fuertes. En estas tareas, los militares no estuvieron solos, sino que contaron con la activa participación de intelectuales, técnicos y políticos provenientes de pequeños partidos de centro-izquierda, así como de dirigentes populares del campo y la ciudad. Más allá de la evaluación que uno tenga sobre esta experiencia, es indudable que el gobierno militar de Velasco Alvarado produjo cambios profundos en la naturaleza y composición de la economía y la sociedad peruanas.
Poco después de retirarse del poder en 1980, los militares fueron convocados por los gobiernos democráticamente elegidos para participar en la lucha antisubversiva contra Sendero Luminoso y el Movimiento Revolucionario Túpac Amaru. En amplias zonas del país, conforme este enfrentamiento se agudizaba, los gobiernos civiles abdicaron el poder político en favor de los uniformados, que pasaron a ocupar jefaturas político-militares en las zonas de conflicto. Luego de cruentos enfrentamientos en los que murieron miles de personas no combatientes, los militares derrotaron a los subversivos con la activa participación de las organizaciones de autodefensa indígenas y de las comunidades campesinas.
Toda una generación de jóvenes oficiales, entre ellos Ollanta Humala, hizo su carrera militar durante los años de conflicto, desarrollando vínculos y familiarizándose con los problemas que afligían a las comunidades locales. En muchos lugares donde los municipios, colegios, postas médicas y oficinas públicas no funcionaban por los estragos de la guerra, la única presencia del Estado eran las bases militares. La única autoridad a la que podía recurrir la población eran estos oficiales; una autoridad temida, pero que al mismo tiempo constituía la única esperanza de orden y protección. Quizá por ahí se explique en parte la alta votación obtenida por el candidato Humala en las zonas de conflicto, incluida la localidad de Madre Mía (provincia de Tocache), donde tiene acusaciones de violaciones a los derechos humanos.
Una anotación complementaria es que tanto la generación de Ollanta como la de Velasco, tuvieron que ir al interior a luchar contra la subversión, y aprender en el camino sobre las necesidades y urgencias de la población. La diferencia es que esta experiencia formativa dio lugar en el caso de Velasco de un proyecto institucional de reformas, mientras en el caso de Humala hasta el momento parece ser la iniciativa de un Comandante que rebela primero contra la jerarquía militar y luego ingresa al terreno de la competencia político electoral.
Las relaciones entre los militares y los civiles son bastante fluidas, un aspecto obvio pero poco valorado en el análisis político, donde se tiende a separarlos en compartimentos estancos. Por lo general, se asume que la sociedad civil, como esfera de actividad, solo pertenece a los civiles, una idea que surge de los contextos en los que este concepto reaparece en el análisis académico, durante la segunda mitad del siglo XX. En efecto, es en los contextos de las luchas civiles contra regímenes autoritarios —como las dictaduras militares del Cono Sur y los socialismos estatales de Europa del Este— en los que se establece esta dicotomía.
Sin embargo, como acabamos de ver, en la práctica existen fuertes y variados vínculos entre el espacio militar y el civil. El ejército en sí siempre ha sido un vehículo de movilidad y socialización para jóvenes indígenas y campesinos reclutados a la fuerza para hacer el servicio militar. Una vez terminado su servicio, la experiencia militar pasa a constituir un elemento importante en la identidad y organización de estos ex reclutas. Por ello, en muchas partes del país existen asociaciones de licenciados del ejército, verdaderas organizaciones de la sociedad civil cuyos miembros se reúnen periódicamente para realizar actividades sociales y comunitarias. Muchos de estos hombres formaron parte de las rondas campesinas y las organizaciones de autodefensa que enfrentaron a Sendero Luminoso en alianza con los militares en actividad durante las décadas de 1980 y 1990. Luego, durante los gobiernos de transición, los encontramos como líderes de comunidades campesinas, alcaldes y concejales de centros poblados y distritos rurales. Incluso varios de ellos participan activamente de las mesas de concertación para el desarrollo local en algunas provincias —como Huanta, en Ayacucho, y Churcampa, en Huancavelica —, para luego constituir elementos claves en los movimientos nacionalistas liderados por los hermanos Antauro y Ollanta Humala.
La participación de estos licenciados podría explicar, en parte, el amplio apoyo electoral que ha obtenido la candidatura del comandante Ollanta Humala en las regiones pobres e indígenas más afectadas por la guerra antisubversiva. Sin embargo, esto es más una hipótesis de trabajo que una certidumbre. Sorprende, eso sí, la forma en que, en tan pocos meses, esta candidatura ha podido construir una estructura política nacional de apoyo. Según el informe del conteo rápido de Transparencia, Unión por el Perú tuvo personeros en 75,5% de todas las mesas de sufragio a nivel nacional, mientras Unidad Nacional lo hizo en 77,8% y el APRA en 78,6%. Indudablemente, en esto juega un papel la existencia de experimentados operadores políticos de origen izquierdista que se encuentran a disposición de alguna candidatura con posibilidades de éxito. También que los candidatos al Congreso fueron los encargados de reclutar y colocar a personeros con el objeto de defender sus propios votos en las mesas. Sin embargo, esta explicación no parece ser suficiente, lo cual sugiere la participación de los licenciados en las actividades de vigilancia electoral.
En suma, existen demasiadas evidencias de los estrechos vínculos entre lo militar y lo político como para sustentar la idea de que el comandante Ollanta Humala es un outsider, un personaje excluido de las instituciones del poder y sin vínculos con los círculos políticos. Este no parece ser el caso, más aún si pertenece a una institución que ha participado y participa en la política peruana desde la fundación de la República. Necesitamos una discusión más áspera y menos liviana, como bien reclama Romeo Grompone, para avanzar en el conocimiento de los procesos políticos. Estas notas se inscriben en esta dirección.

Here is the transcript of a dialogue with Martín Tanaka and Santiago Pedraglio on the outcome of the first round and perspectives on the second round of the election in Peru. The dialogue was organized by Palestra, which is produced by the Catholic University of Peru. Download file

Maxwell A. Cameron
April 22, 2006
Now that we know for sure that Alan Garcia will be in the second round, I confess to feeling no surprise. I know, nobody likes a braggart, but I predicted the April 9 election with a level of accuracy equal or better than all the polls, the exit polls, and even the quick counts.
Here is what happened. The night before the election, I was lounging with a group of friends and drinking mineral water (in deference to the local dry law at election time). We decided to take bets on who could predict the outcome. The winner would buy a round of mineral water. I predicted Ollanta Humala would get 30 percent, Alan Garcia 25 percent, and Lourdes Flores 24 percent. With 96 percent of the votes counted, Humala stands at 30.8 percent, Garcia at 24.3 percent, and Flores at 23.6 percent.
My secret formula? There were two key sources of intelligence: the results of the 2001 election and the last good poll. In 2001 Alejandro Toledo won 36.5 percent, Garcia won 25.8 percent, and Flores won 24.3 percent. The last APOYO poll, released on April 8, gave Humala 27 percent, and placed Flores and Garcia in a tie with 23 percent each. I assumed that—at least for the candidates who had run previously—history would repeat itself. There would be a tight race between Garcia and Flores, similar to 2001. Humala would not do as well as Toledo, and 30 percent seemed like a nice round number.
Two things made me think Garcia would nudge out Flores: the hidden vote for his party, APRA, and party organization. APRA voters tend to be reticent with pollsters, and APRA has a superior capacity to pull and defend its votes.
Having discovered a good formula, I plan to use it to predict the presidential runoff between Humala and Garcia (which will probably be held on May 28, though it could be as late June 4). We know that in 2001 Garcia lost to Alejandro Toledo by 47 to 53 percent. We can use this as a baseline, and factor in the last good poll taken before the election.
Some observers think that Garcia can do better this time. The reasons for this view were nicely summarized in an editorial in Caretas last week (see: Caretas 1920, April 13, 2006, p. 17).
First, Humala is arguably a weaker candidate than Toledo was in 2001. Toledo got a lot of credit for leading the opposition to the Fujimori regime. He won 36.5 percent in the first round (and his support was fairly solid across the country).
Second, the winner in the first round often faces an “anyone but…” campaign in the second. Alberto Fujimori placed second in the first round in 1990, and beat Mario Vargas Llosa in the runoff.
Whereas Flores supporters had no trouble supporting Toledo in a second round in 2001, they are unlikely to vote for Humala. Flores supporters mobbed Humala when he tried to enter his polling station in the Ricardo Palma University. They held him hostage for nearly an hour.
Alan Garcia is already wooing Flores with promises of co-governability. Flores can see that APRA will a pivotal party in congress, and her ranks are already looking weak. She may need an alliance with APRA—and the pork it will provide—to retain coalition discipline.
Third, local business and foreign investors have already realized that their interests lie with Garcia (See: Anuncia primer ministro Pedro Pablo Kuczynski, desde Washington: “García haría mejor gobierno esta vez”, Expreso, April 22, 2006). APRA would probably sign the Free Trade Agreement with the United States, arguing that it is necessary to promote exports from the highlands and the coastal areas where APRA seeks inroads.
Finally, Garcia wants victory so badly he can taste it. He is a brilliant campaigner, and this is his last chance to do something great for APRA and Peru.
Other observers caution that Humala enjoys the many advantages that accrue to the “outsider” in Peruvian elections.
First, he does not have a record that can be used against him and will attack Alan Garcia for his performance in government in 1985-1990.
Second, as the candidate of the “anti-establishment,” Humala can paint Garcia as a traditional politician, a creature of the past.
Third, he can alter his image more easily and may be able to lower his negative ratings with smart strategies.
Both candidates will go after one another’s core constituencies. It is symbolically significant that Garcia has begun the campaign for the second round in Puno, and has proposed a debate with Humala in Puno or Cusco. Humala has promised to conquer the north, taking the nationalist message into Aprista territory.
The real battleground, however, will be Lima (the swing voters, between north and south). Neither candidate did that well in Lima in the first round. This is where the Flores’ voters were concentrated. Now Lima is up for grabs.
I am not yet ready to take bets on mineral water. Before making a prediction for the second round, I recommend waiting until the last good poll, meditating on the results of 2001, and then making an educated guess.
See also: “How to Predict the Peruvian Election” Comment is free… The Guardian

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Maxwell A. Cameron
April 21, 2006
In an interview with La Republica, Pedro Francke offered a number of interesting observations with regard to the sources of Ollanta Humala’s support. The first question he was asked was: if Humala’s support comes from the poor, who represent 52 percent of the total population of Peru, why did Humala win only about 30 percent of the vote? To this, Francke replied that “I don’t believe there is a direct correlation between poverty and the vote for Ollanta Humala.” Humala, said Francke, has strong support in some poor regions, like Puno, Cusco, and Huancavelica, but not in others like the jungle and Cajamarca.
I thought this was an intriguing observation, so I went to the Instituto Nacional de Estadistica e Informacion (http://www.inei.gob.pe/) to look at poverty numbers. One of the tables provides statistics on poverty by region in 2001 and 2004. The first thing that even a casual glance suggests is that it is simply not true to say there has been no trickle-down from economic growth in the past few years. There has been poverty reduction, but it is uneven.
Overall, poverty has declined in Peru from about 54.3 to 51.6 percent between 2001-04. In some areas, like Lima, poverty has actually increased. Poverty has declined significantly along the coast of Peru, such as in Ica (where it has declined from 46.7 to 29.2) and in Tumbes (where it has declined from 44.4 to 21.6), but it has also declined in some of the highland areas like Cusco (from 72.7 to 59.2) and in the jungle departments of Ucayali (70.8 to 55.8) and Madre de Dios (48.7 to 20.4).
When we look at the distribution of poverty in Peru, it matches the vote for Humala only imperfectly. Download file. Thus, for example, Humala has done best in the poorest departments like Huancavelica, Puno and Ayacucho, but he has also done well in Arequipa, Tacna, and Madre de Dios. On the other hand, he has not done so well in certain poor departments like Cajamarca or Pasco. There is a rough correlation between poverty and the vote for Humala, but it weaker than one might expect. Nor is there an obvious relationship between changes in poverty and the vote for Humala. Humala has done well in places where poverty has declined (like Tacna and Madre de Dios) as well as in places here it has remained unchanged (Huancavelica and Huanuco).
Pedro Francke’s conclusion is that there is more to the vote for Humala than poverty. “Poverty is combined with marginalization but also with an element of ethnic identification. It is striking how similar the results are with those obtained by Alejandro Toledo in 2001.” This is indeed true. Toledo did best in places like Cusco and Puno, but he also did well in places like Loreto and Ancash where Humala has not done so well. Toledo did better in Lima, Cajamarca, and Lambayeque; Humala has done better in Ayacucho, Huancavelica, and Apurimac.
Violence is another factor that probably plays a role. Humala does well wherever there was major conflict (Ayacucho, Huanuco, Junin) , but he also does well in places where there was no conflict (Moquegua and Tacna).
So what is driving the vote for Humala? I’d have to say that the most interesting exercise in looking at these numbers is simply ranking departments according to support for Humala. What comes up? Basically, Peru is divided north/south. Draw a line from Lima east to Madre de Dios. Take everything below except Ica, and exclude everything above except Huanuco and Junin, and you have over 50 percent support for Humala in what is left over. Take the north of Peru, add Ica and subtract Huanuco and Junin, and Humala’s support falls to 28 percent. The lesson for the second round is clear: a fight between Garcia and Humala is likely to become a fight between north and south.

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Maxwell A. Cameron
April 17, 2006
The idea of a constituent assembly is making headlines again. Some sectors of UPP may want to back away from the idea (UPP members of congress may not wish to contemplate their own obsolescence just yet). Nevertheless, it is a formal part of the UPP platform.
The parties that have gained significant representation in congress (especially APRA and UN) are starting to lay down the gauntlet. They are questioning the necessity of a constituent assembly. Jorge del Castillo, Lourdes Alcorta, and Martha Hildebrandt have all questioned the idea in recent days.
In two separate interviews, two of Peru’s most respected experts on constitutional issues, Henry Pease and Enrique Bernales discuss issue of constitutional reform. They coincide in saying that the existing constitution (and indeed, Peru’s previous constitutions) does not contemplate the idea of a constituent assembly and therefore the only body that could convene such a “supra-constitutional” body (to use Bernales apt term) would be “We the people.” That is, it would have to come from a referendum.
Pease suggests that the existing constitution should first be modified to establish how, who, and under what circumstances a constituent assembly can be convened. In his view, the rule of law means acting within the constitution and if the constitution does not state how to convene a constituent assembly this should be figured out within the existing legal framework.
Another possibility is that an Humala government would force a confrontation with the congress over constitutional reform. It would bully congress into submission (using the threat of dissolution). Congress would go along or face its own extinction. As Pease notes, were the initiative presented by the Prime Minister as a matter of confidence, this could be done—though it would require the congress to be foolish enough to censure a PM twice.
Does the UPP have the convening power necessary to call a referendum, win a majority, and create a constituent assembly? Hard to say.
Humala’s 30 percent of the vote in the first round does not seem like a powerful mandate for change. One of the consequences of ballotage, however, is that it gives the executive a sense of having won a majority of the popular vote, even in the absence of a majority in congress. This is supposed to inoculate the system against coups, but it can also encourage hyper-presidentialism—meaning, a tendency for the president to want to bypass courts and congress on majoritarian grounds.
One could an eventual Humala government, fresh from a second round victory, insisting on a referendum to convene a constituent assembly and using the sense of momentum provided by a second round victory to create a force for change. Chavez did it in 1998-1999. Bernales makes a good point: this would take time. In fact, Chavez devoted virtually the entire period form 1998-2000 in a process of constitutional reform. One of the reasons for the flurry of decrees in 2001 (which is part of what prompted the opposition that culminated in general strikes and a coup attempt in 2002) was the sense that the social agenda had lagged due to efforts to create the Bolivarian constitution.
The alternative would be to modify the constitution using the faculties attributed to the congress by the existing constitution. The trouble with this that recent experience is not encouraging. However, as Bernales notes, between UPP, APRA and UN there may just be enough support to return to the 1979 constitution. Perhaps this is the formula.

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From left to right: Max Cameron, Fabi Bazo, Taylor Boas, Henry Dietz,
Cynthia McClintock, Aldo Panfichi, Alberto Vergara, Bruno Seminario
POST-ELECTION WORKSHOP:
“Diagnosis of the First Round and Prognosis for the Second Round”
Rapporteur: Maxwell A. Cameron
Universidad del Pacifico
Lima, 12 April 2006
Author’s Note: This report was written with helpful input from Cynthia McClintock, Cynthia Sanborn, Aldo Panfichi and Fabiola Bazo. The author assumes full responsibility for any errors.
Under the auspices of the Centro de Investigación de la Universidad del Pacífico (CIUP), a workshop was held to analyze the results of the April 9 general elections and to consider the results in light of the second round of the presidential elections to be held at the end of May or early June. What follows is a report of the main observations made by the participants in the workshop.
OVERVIEW
At the time of writing, Ollanta Humala had just won about 30 percent of the vote in the first round of Peru’s presidential election. Alan Garcia held a small lead over Lourdes Flores, with 24.4 percent to 23.4 percent. Of the remaining candidates, none came close to the front-runners. As of Friday, April 14, 2006, Most of the 250,000 votes from abroad had not yet been counted, and returns from over 7,000 polling booths were under dispute. As a result, it was impossible to say who would place in the second round runoff against Humala.
With this caveat in mind, participants in the workshop ventured a number of important observations. The speakers tended to agree that the second round would be a bitterly-fought contest. If APRA makes it into the second round, it will be at the fulcrum of politics in Peru, for two reasons. First, voters who do not necessarily like Alan Garcia will have nowhere else to go if they want to prevent Humala from coming to power. In other words, if there is an “Anyone but Humala” coalition, it will benefit APRA. Second, APRA will be a pivotal party in congress. It could govern from the center, appealing to the UN for votes from the right, or to UPP for votes from the left. A contest between Garcia and Humala will also be a contest between a party and a candidate without a party—or perhaps, as a couple of participants noted, a candidate of Peru’s oldest party, the armed forces. The APRA will play a critical role in defining Peru’s destiny over the next few weeks. It brings tremendous political baggage, however, and it will not be easy to convince voters it deserves a “second chance.”
A contest between Flores and Humala would result in a highly polarized campaign pitting Lima (and voters abroad) against the provinces, rich against the poor, left against right. Peruvian voters have demonstrated a mood of protest, which Ollanta Humala successfully exploited. While this mood is not angry enough to produce a landslide victory for Humala, it appears to have caught the right by surprise. Flores seemed unable to shake the impression that she is tied to intransigent advocates of the current economic model, including technocrats in power. The inability of the leaders around Flores to move toward a more centrist position, due largely to internal constraints, prevented a broader alliance that might have encompassed Accion Popular. Current projections suggest few or no gains in congress for Unidad Nacional. At the same time, the left has proven unable to overcome its history of factionalism and its lack of organic connections to the classes and sectors it seeks to represent.
In a second round Ollanta Humala faces a major challenge. He will have to continue to tap into the mood of protest of his core supporters while projecting an image of moderation to the median voter. He may have a harder time competing for that space with Alan Garcia than he would against Flores. He has to add 20 points to his current margin of victory. If Garcia is the contender, Humala will emphasize the Garcia record in power in 1985-1990. He will also have to project some sense of an ability to offer a good government of his own. In some respects, the choice facing voters could be between the option of a Hugo Chavez-style government without the oil rents versus a Lula style social democratic option, complete with the corruption and governance problems that includes. If the contest is with Flores, Humala will still have a tough time competing with Flores for voters who, in the first round, cast ballots for Paniagua’s Frente de Centro or for the Fujimorista Alianza para el Futuro. There is strong antipathy to Humala in both camps.

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Maxwell A. Cameron
April 13, 2006

According to fellow-blogger Rici (see comment below), the distribution of seats in Congress could look something like the following
UPP 42 (Ollanta Humala’s “borrowed” party)
APRA 38 (Alan Garcia’s party)
UN 17 (The alliance behind Lourdes Flores)
AF 13 (The Fujimorista coalition)
FC 5 (Frente de Centro, led by Valentin Paniagua)
PP 3 (Peru Posible, the ruling party)
The exact number of seats may vary, but there are five inescapable conclusions.
First, the governing party, Peru Posible, has been all but wiped out. From 45 seats it is down to 3.
Second, no party of the left has passed the 4 percent threshold necessary to hold a seat in congress.
Third, UN has the same representation as before: 17 seats. Moreover, in its haste to jump on the renovation bandwagon, it has lost its most effective legislators.
Fourth, UPP did better than many expected. Rather than third, as polls predicted, it has a plurality. Humala has coat-tails.
Fifth, APRA is the pivotal party. It is the only party that could govern by cutting alliances with left (UPP) or right (UPP), or by playing the two off against each other.
Sixth, the Fujimoristas have increased their share of seats from 3 to 13. They are a force to be reckoned with, and they will have one over-riding goal: to bring back Alberto Fujimori. One of the biggest vote winners is Fujimori’s daughter, Keiko (see profile in The Miami Herald). This makes one wonder what would have happened in this election had Alberto Fujimori been able to run.
The prospect of an alliance between UPP and AF follows naturally from the composition of the congress. Since the over-riding goal of the AF is to have the case against Fujimori dropped, they will ultimately have to deal with whoever is elected. They would probably have less negotiating power with an APRA government, which will have more alliance possibilities. A UPP-AF alliance would also benefit Humala by bringing him closer to a legislative majority–though the two groups do not quite have 60 seats between them–and thereby reduce dependence on APRA or other groups. Yet the idea of any sort of deal-making between the two sides provokes sharply negative reactions from within their respective camps.
Postscript: Matthew Shugart, who runs a very useful blog called Fruits and Votes, argues that alliances are of particular importance in Peru’s semi-presidential system. Congress has a special power in this system: it can censure (and thereby remove) the prime minister (head of cabinet) (see Articles 122, and 132 of the Constitution). For a penetrating analysis from one of the great experts on institutions in Latin America, read below under extended entry.
In the comments section below, Sasha asks a question that goes to the heart of a related institutional issue: what happens if the president does not have enough seats to form a majority in congress? Can the other parties get together and select a new executive? The short answer is: no, the executive is not dependent on the composition of congress, as in a parliamentary system. The other parties can form an alliance. In principle, if they have enough votes, they can impeach the president (but that is rare). A president who does not have a majority in congress will typically try to form alliances to pass legislation.
As Matt points out, the need for alliances is built into the system to some extent. I also tend to agree with Matt’s thoughts on Garcia: “Garcia would have far less ability to destroy the economy this time if he won (as I think he will, if he is in the runoff). Last time, his party had a majority in congress and was totally under his control. He was unchecked. This time he will have to build alliances.”
The next president will not have a majority (as Garcia did before), and will have to spend a fair amount of time building coalitions. Of course, there is another alternative: rule by decree, ignore the congress and constitution, bypass legislature and courts, and establish what Guillermo O’Donnell has called “delegative democracy.” That would be possible in the event of an Humala victory, especially given his stated interest in a constituent congress/assembly (see the astute analysis by Julio Carrion on this).

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Natalia Sobrevilla Perea
12 de abril del 2006
Hace unas cuantas semanas me encontré con un amigo que me dijo que prefería el demonio antes que Lourdes Flores. Hoy cuando va quedando cada vez mas claro que no será ella quien pase a la segunda vuelta, muchos en el Perú se sienten en la necesidad de decidir quien será este ‘demonio’ a elegir en la segunda vuelta. Bryce Echenique ha descrito esta decisión como tener que escoger entre morir de sida o de cáncer, y otros como Susana Villarán han optado por el voto en blanco o viciado.
La pregunta que nos hacemos muchos en estas circunstancias, es si Alan García se merece una segunda oportunidad. El nos asegura que ha cambiado, que ha reflexionado, que la vida le ha mostrado sus errores, pero para quienes vivimos su gobierno de 1985 a 1990 el recuerdo de esos tiempos nos hace muy difícil confiar en la misma persona que ya una vez nos dijo que en política no hay que ser ingenuos. Muchos éramos bastante jóvenes en esos años pero no olvidamos como el país, pasó de estar moderadamente en crisis a una crisis tan profunda en que las posibilidades de futuro nos parecían imposibles. Quienes hemos vivido la hiperinflación, la estatización de la banca, el dólar MUC, los que hemos tenido que hacer cola para comprar azúcar, aceite y arroz, para después intercambiar con los vecinos, los que crecimos con el pan popular, el cuaderno popular y la leche Enci, encontramos muy difícil pensar en García en términos abstractos. Esto sin considerar además que durante su gobierno el terrorismo dejó el campo y pasó a la ciudad, vivimos paros armados, apagones, falta de agua, toque de queda y por primera vez tuvimos un poco del sabor de lo que sucedía en el resto del país.
A pesar de todo esto, muchos de quienes se han pasado los últimos quince años denunciando a García como el peor gobernante del Perú, un hombre corrupto que pasó de tener un departamento mediano en Miraflores a las mansiones de Naplo, Camacho y París, un inepto que llevo al Perú a ser inelegible por el FMI, un violador de los derechos humanos que lleva como vicepresidente a un general acusado de la matanza de los penales, han comenzado a pensar que quizás en estas circunstancias el líder Aprista sea el mal menor. Nadie le ha hecho una mejor campaña a Alan García que Ollanta Humala. Su discurso violentista y radical, sumado a las graves acusaciones en su contra han logrado en las ultimas semanas algo que pensé que nunca llegaría a ver: muchos de aquellos que juraron que todos menos Alan, de los que gritaron en su momento ¡Y va a caer y va a caer caballo loco va a caer!, están ahora pensando que ante las circunstancias es mejor darle una segunda oportunidad.
García sabe que para derrotar a Humala necesita del apoyo de la derecha, que la coalición debe ser con Unidad Nacional, además de con el Frente de Centro, Lay y todos los ‘pitufos’ que pueda sumarse. De alguna manera el dirigente de la olla le ha hecho el trabajo aun más fácil definiendo el espectro político como ‘todos contra Ollanta’. Pero lo que queda por verse es quien transara con Alianza para el Futuro, sus quince escaños en el Congreso les dan una posición privilegiada desde donde negociar el posible regreso y rehabilitación política de su líder. Humala ha dicho que no negociara con corruptos, mientras que García ha declarado que el fujimorismo no es una fuerza dictatorial en este momento, que han sido elegidos por el pueblo y que esta dispuesto a ‘darle la mano hasta a su peor enemigo’.
¿Será darle a Alan García una segunda oportunidad, abrirle la puerta a Fujimori para su segunda oportunidad? ¿Será esta una oportunidad mediada por la derecha, pactada con los representantes de Unidad Nacional? Opciones dicho sea de paso que no son mutuamente excluyentes, ya que solo basta ver a algunos de los acompañantes de Lourdes Flores para que eso sea evidente. El mapa político de los próximos años se esta reconfigurando en estos días y dependiendo de cómo se tejan las alianzas, como se presente Humala y como se establezcan los posibles pactos los que no votaron ni por Alan ni Ollanta en la primera vuelta decidirán cada uno si es mejor malo conocido o quien sabe que por conocer.
Natalia Sobrevilla Perea is an historian who teaches at Yale University.

Maxwell A. Cameron
The Guardian. Comment is free
April 10, 2006 12:21 PM

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Maxwell A. Cameron
April 8, 2006
It is highly unlikely that any of the top three candidates will win an outright majority in the presidential election tomorrow. Almost for certain there will be a second round. The last polls published had Ollanta Humala in the lead, and a close race for second between Lourdes Flores and Alan Garcia.
Over the course of the week, polls have circulated that cannot be published under Peru’s election laws. They can, however, be published by the foreign press. As a result, many of these results are circulating on the Internet. However, caution should be exercised in interpreting these polls. Some of the polls may not be trustworthy. Others may be accurate, but the situation is fluid. We will publish all the polls we have received after the period of publication embargo has ended. For now, here are a few thoughts on what might be factors shaping the race in its final stretch.
There is good reason to assume a high degree of volatility in the electorate. Voter preferences have been shifting from one day to the next, and there are many voters who will decide for whom to vote on the day of the election—tomorrow. The volatility of the electorate is in part a reflection of the lack of strong partisan attachments.
The number of undecided voters is probably greater than the margin between any two of the top three candidates. In other words, the undecided voters may well determine the outcome of this election. In this sense, the election is too close to call. It is truly an open race. No candidate can feel secure in the knowledge that he or she will place in the second round.
The last published APOYO poll placed Ollanta Humala in the lead by a fairly comfortable margin. Humala has the advantage of being a candidate who expresses frustration with the system. Voters who are frustrated with the system are probably impervious to allegations that Humala committed human rights abuses, and they may like his authoritarian aura.
One of Humala’s perceived virtues is that as a tough leader with a military background he might be able to crack down on corruption. Hence allegations that he has linkages to the Montesinos mafia could be damaging, even more than the human rights abuses. Similarly, the meeting between Torres Caro and Delgado Parker, and the trip by Salomon Lerner Ghitis to Chile apparently to look at arms purchases give an impression of double-dealing that could deflate Humala. In one campaign stop Humala was attacked by people who threw lettuce and said “out with the corrupt.” The hint of corruption in Humala’s camp could be damaging, and he sense that he has been placed on the defensive was reinforced by the tone of his speech in the closing of the campaign in Lima.
Humala’s supporters may feel besieged by the intense campaign attacks on their leader. This could drive them away from Humala, or simply result in greater reticence to publicly express support.
Humala has another problem. Much of his support will come from rural areas, and that is where it is hardest to pull and defend the vote. His support in the armed forces is hard to estimate, and the fact that some military and police personnel cannot vote could depress his support slightly. The armed forces represent less than 1 percent of the vote, however, and it is speculated by experts that they will probably not be decisive. But the Humala camp has to mobilize a lot of supporters throughout the country to defend the vote, and that represents an organizational challenge.
The APRA party has consistently held third place throughout this campaign, but to the extent that the margin between APRA and Unidad Nacional is narrow, one of the advantages of having an organized political party with lots of members is that you can pull the vote and defend the vote in polling booths right across the country. APRA has 120,000 supportes defending the vote. Moreover, APRA may have a “hidden vote,” because some people are loath to confess their support for a leader who is associated with a difficult period in Peruvian politics. In the past, this has meant APRA did slightly better in the end than the polls suggested it would.
There are two types of undecided voters: those who have no idea who to vote for (that is, their preferences are not formed) and those torn between two candidates (they have a sincere preference and a strategic preference). Some of the most conflicted voters in this campaign may be those who support smaller candidates. Many might like to vote for Flores in a second round, but think that if they don’t vote for her in the first round they may not get a chance in the second round (because she could be beat out by APRA which appears to have some momentum, especially after the closing rally).
Flores has been making this pitch in recent weeks, especially to Paniagua voters. There are a number of potential problems with this thinking. First, it can backfire. La Primera reports that Flores has apologized for comments made by VP candidate Woodman to the effect that a vote for Paniagua is a lost vote. Second, it is not clear that Paniagua voters would necessarily prefer Flores over Garcia, though there is some reason to expect they would. Third, it is possible that a vote for Flores or Garcia could be a wasted vote as well (either one of them might not make it into the second round), in which case the voter would be left with a third best candidate in the second round. Fourth, voters might just say, “to heck with strategic voting, the situation is too uncertain to know how to cast a strategic vote, I may as well vote sincerely.” This could mean that the smaller candidates are not abandoned. This makes the race potentially even tighter.
Lourdes Flores ended her campaign on an upbeat note. She will capitalize on the sense that of the three top candidates she is the most decent and trustworthy. In the face of a tough decision, she is the least disliked. That low level of negative rating could be her best card. Her weakness is organizational. She cannot match the APRA party organization and there seems to be feuding even among her alliances’ scrutineers.
This could be a tight race not only at the presidential level, but also at the congressional level. Peru has a preferential vote system in which candidates not only vote for a slate but have the option of choosing a particular candidate (identified by a number on a congressional list). If the voter does not specify the candidate by number, the vote is cast according to the ranking of candidates determined by the party or group. This means that congressional candidates are competing not only for votes for their slate, but also for votes for their own candidacy. This can generate competitiveness within congressional lists for shares of the preferential vote.
Adding to the complexity of all of this is the fact that there is a 4 percent threshold for legislative representation. If a party does not get enough votes to elect 5 candidates or 4 percent of the total vote it cannot hold a seat in congress. Some individual candidates may fare well, but if their list does not cross the threshold they will not take a seat on congress. All of this makes the use of exit polls a source of concern because they could generate false expectations.
To summarize, this is an extremely competitive election. For a number of weeks it seemed clear that there would be a second round; Humala would be in the second round; and there would be a tight race between Flores and Garcia. That is probably still the case, although there is enough volatility in the electorate to give encouragement to pretty well any preference.
At the end of the day, what may be decisive is whether the undecided, finally forced to choose, surge for Flores. Alternatively, some of the smaller candidates might be abandoned in favor of Flores. In that case, a runoff between Humala and Flores would be the result. If the margin between Flores and Garcia is narrow, the APRA party’s superior organization—its capacity to pull and defend the vote—could be decisive.

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

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In this article for Open Democracy, John Crabtree examines the “Humala Phenomenon.”

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Maxwell A. Cameron
April 3, 2006
As the final week of the campaign began, the biggest fight appears to be between Lourdes Flores Nano and her National Unity alliance and the American Popular Revolutionary Alliance, led by Alan Garcia. The front-page headline of La Republica (which tends to be sympathetic to the APRA) was: “Alan: I will defeat Ollanta.” Garcia claims he is the candidate best able to defeat the “threat of violence and authoritarianism” represented by Ollanta Humala, the front-runner in the race. According to Garcia, Flores cannot stop Humala.

Source: La Republica, April 3, 2006
An interesting contrast to the headline in La Republica is the front page headline of Correo (which tends to support Flores): “Is a vote for Paniagua a vote for Alan?” The top news story is an interview with pollsters who suggest that Paniagua is competing for the same voters as Flores, and he could be the spoiler in this election (as Fernando Olivera was in 2001). The 6 percent of the vote Paniagua has locked up could push Flores into the second round.
Peru.21 (which tends to be fairly balanced), ran “War of Nerves” as its headline, and noted that both Flores and Garcia vow to dispute the second round with Humala. Peru21 presented two views. One analyst, Romeo Grompone said Alan is favored by his centrist position; another, Nelson Manrique said the rise of APRA could re-awaken anti-Alan sentiment.
There is a full page interview with Alfredo Torres in El Comercio. Torres is the head of the polling firm APOYO. He notes that Flores and Garcia are in a virtual “technical ties” and that there is a tendency for their places in the polls to converge. He predicts a huge confrontation between the two. He sees Garcia as eating into Humala’s votes. 10 percent of the electorate will decide for whom to vote on the last day.
The competition between APRA and National Unity has extended to the scrutiny of votes. Both are preparing small armies of volunteers to watch the voting in booths across the country. UN will do an exit poll of its own, and APRA will do a quick count. UN has 124,612 volunteers to defend their votes, and 88,000 will be devoted to defending votes in polling stations across the country in the face of possible challenges by APRA or UPP. APRA hopes to have people in the 88,000 voting booths across Peru as well. They have 87 percent covered and are aiming for 100 percent. UPP also hopes to have personnel in all polling booths.
Humala continues to take a beating for the meeting between his vice presidential candidate, Carlos Torres Caro, and Genaro Delgado Parker (owner of Panamericana Television). He insists that he will not pardon the station’s $10 million debt, or allow the station to pay it off its debt with publicity for the state. Torres Caro has been attacked from within UPP by Jose Vega, who was dismayed by the lunch with Delgado Parker.
Humala is also attacked prominently in the newpaper Expreso (which is often considered close to the armed forces). “How did he pay for his honey moon?” asks Expreso. The story inside claims Humala’s honey moon cost $10,000, far more than a poorly paid army officer could afford on his own. Humala was a commander in the early 1990s at a time when drug trafficking was widespread. Protection money was taken from Colombia cartels in return for allowing drug shipments. Also, Humala was promoted in 1999 (the year he was married) to the 3rd Military Region under General Abraham Cano, a man of confidence of Vladimiro Montesinos. He was put in charge of an artillery group in the Arica Base. Interviews with military brass reinforce the claim that Humala must have had other sources of income.

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Maxwell A. Cameron
April 2, 2006
At this moment, one week from today, the polls will be closed and scrutineers will be counting the votes. The election is one week away, and in this final week many things could happen. The last week is strategically important. Each campaign will want to end with a sense of momentum and anticipated triumph. The closing rallies will be big, noisy, colorful events, and a couple are scheduled to occur simultaneously within the radius of a few city blocks in downtown Lima.
The insults and the recriminations between the various candidates and their supporters will probably intensify. An especially intense race is emerging between Lourdes Flores of National Unity (UN) and Alan Garcia of the American Popular Revolutionary Alliance (APRA) for the second-place spot. Whereas all the polls coincide in suggesting that the first place candidate is Ollanta Humala of the Union for Peru (UPP), is it unclear whether the critically important runner-up candidate will be Lourdes Flores or Alan Garcia. The tendency in the polls over the past few weeks has been for Garcia to gain support slowly and for Flores to declining support equally slowly. It is possible that by the end of the week the two candidates could be tied, in which case either one might pass into the second round.

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Marta Lillo Bustos
Diario Financiero
31 de Marzo del 2006, pp. 51-2.
Download file 1
Download file 2

Julio F. Carrión
Profesor de Ciencias Políticas y Relaciones Internacionales
Universidad de Delaware, USA
Con escasos días antes del 9 de abril, la gran mayoría de los peruanos tiene una idea muy clara acerca de por quién va a votar. Muchos lo harán por Ollanta Humala, quién ha prometido llamar a una asamblea constituyente apenas asuma el poder. Si las encuestas recientes son correctas, existe un amplio apoyo popular a esta idea. De convocarse dicha asamblea, que probablemente producirá una constitución a gusto del presidente, el Perú seguramente volverá a caer en el grupo de países que experimentan un fenómeno contemporáneo muy peculiar: el autoritarismo de origen electoral.
Leemos en los diarios en estos días que el señor Lukashenko, presidente de Bielorrusia desde 1994, trata por medios violentos de mantenerse en el poder. La ironía es que Lukashenko ganó su primera elección en unos comicios impecables y amparado en una plataforma de lucha contra la corrupción. Después de su elección convocó a sucesivos plebiscitos para cambiar la constitución y poder ser reelegido repetidamente. El parecido con lo sucedido en nuestro país en la década del noventa es innegable. Y es también parecido a lo sucedido en muchos otros países de diversas regiones del mundo. El patrón, con algunas variantes, es siempre el mismo: el candidato anti-sistema es elegido abrumadoramente, y una vez en la presidencia usa su apoyo popular—vía plebiscitos o asambleas constituyentes—para cambiar las reglas de juego que lo llevaron al poder, reducir la competencia política, y perpetuarse en el poder. Hugo Chávez en Venezuela, Fujimori en nuestro país, y un gran número de presidentes de las repúblicas que fueron parte de la Unión Soviética, son ejemplos de este tipo de gobierno.
El problema es que una vez que estos autócratas son elegidos, es muy difícil sacarlos del poder vía elecciones. A diferencia de las dictaduras tradicionales, estos gobiernos mantienen las formas de la democracia, pero la vacían de todo contenido. El objetivo es reducir y si es posible eliminar la competencia política sin recurrir a métodos abiertamente represivos. En lugar de balas se usan votos. Para conseguir los votos se utiliza el erario nacional (y a veces la ayuda extranjera) para financiar programas de ayuda social. Y para persuadir a los que dudan siempre hay dinero contante y sonante. Y si hay que usar balas, se usan de manera esporádica y siempre a través de terceros, buscando proteger al presidente de cualquier acusación. FONCODES, Montesinos, el grupo Colina, todos ellos fueron mecanismos para asegurar el poder de Fujimori. A pesar de la vigilancia internacional, y la movilización nacional, fue imposible remover a Fujimori a través elecciones en el año 2000. Tuvimos que esperar a una crisis interna del propio gobierno.
Al comienzo, estos candidatos a autócratas se rodean de tecnócratas y figuras de trayectoria democrática que puedan darle cierta seriedad y respetabilidad. El primer consejo de ministros de Fujimori estuvo compuesto por muchas personas respetables. Conforme avanza el proyecto autoritario, sin embargo, estas personas son descartadas sin miramientos, y los que quedan resultan que no eran ni tan respetables ni tan demócratas como se creía inicialmente.
Ollanta Humala parece destinado a ganar la primera vuelta y probablemente gane la segunda vuelta también. Su candidatura esta rodeada de alguna gente que cree con sinceridad que su gobierno pondrá al Perú en el camino de la justicia social. Ojala que no olviden lo que decía Amartya Sen, que la falta de democracia agrava las desigualdades sociales. Me temo que muchos de ellos serán descartados una vez que se acabe su utilidad, y serán reemplazados por sicofantes. El propio partido Unión por el Perú será descartado cuando Ollanta llegue al poder, como lo son los cohetes propulsores una vez que logran colocar a la nave en el espacio.
Existen varios indicios que indican que un triunfo de Ollanta Humala pondría a la democracia peruana—deficiente, débil e insensible frente a los pobres, pero democracia al fin—en peligro. Ollanta Humala ha anunciado su decisión de convocar a una asamblea constituyente apenas se haga cargo del poder. Esta es una propuesta peligrosísima porque las experiencias recientes en el Perú y otras partes del mundo indican que es el mecanismo que inicia el proceso de autoritarismo político. La constituyente fujimorista creó una superpresidencia y permitió que Fujimori pusiera gente de su confianza en los demás poderes del estado. Como resultado tuvimos un nuevo Jurado Nacional de Elecciones y una nueva Corte Suprema de Justicia. Todos sabemos como acabó esa historia. Ollanta Humala puede fácilmente usar los poderes que le da la actual constitución para intentar un proyecto autoritario. Pero sus intenciones se verían obstruidas por el hecho que, a diferencia de 1993, él no puede fácilmente y de un solo tirón imponer a gente de su confianza en los otros poderes del estado. Pero lo podría hacer si se convocara a una constituyente y se aprobara una nueva constitución.
Por esta razón, a pesar de todos los defectos de la actual constitución, debemos oponernos vigorosamente a que se convoque a una nueva asamblea constituyente. Si el nuevo congreso aprueba semejante ley, el Tribunal Constitucional debiera declararla inconstitucional. Que no cometa el error que se cometió en Venezuela. Sí tal decisión genera una crisis política, mejor ahora que después, cuando Ollanta Humala se haya asegurado y consolidado en el poder.
Mi propuesta es bastante simple: para proteger la naciente democracia, el nuevo presidente debe gobernar con las mismas reglas con las que fue elegido. Es un reclamo mínimo para garantizar la equidad en la competencia política y la continuidad del juego democrático.
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Julio Carrión, one of the leading experts on Peruvian politics, is editor of the recently published volume The Fujimori Legacy (Penn State University Press, 2006). In this commentary, entitled “The Danger of a Constituent Assembly,” Carrión argues that Ollanta Humala’s proposal for a constituent assembly to reform Peru’s constitutional order would open the door to the construction of an electoral-authoritarian regime. As the experience of the Fujimori regime demonstrated, and as the current struggle in Belarus dramatizes, elected autocrats can be difficult to dislodge.

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Maxwell A. Cameron
March 28, 2006
The final weeks of this campaign may define whether Lourdes Flores or Alan Garcia enter the second round against Ollanta Humala. As Fernando Tuesta said last night on Prensa Libre with Rosa Maria Palacios, two things seem almost certain: there will be a second round and Humala will be in the second round.
In an interview in La Republica, Martin Tanaka notes that Alan Garcia has grown very slowly in the polls, while Lourdes Flores continues to have lower negatives. This could be the decisive. He attributes the slow decline of Lourdes Flores to her choice of running mates (both vice presidential and congressional). When asked by the interviewer whether the problems facing Flores might be more structural, Tanaka says that the frustration of the popular sectors does not express itself in a single attitude of rejection, some sectors are more aggressive than others. However, the impression that has developed is that Flores is the candidate of Lima and Humala the candidate of the provinces. Finally, Tanaka says that the alliances in the second round are unlikely to be decisive. The leaders of the parties have little say over how their followers will vote.
I would add a couple of things to Tanaka’s analysis. First, Flores has failed to give a face to popular frustration with the conditions of everyday life for the majority of people in this country. In an interview with Flores on Dos Dedos de Frente on Saturday, Augusto Alvarez Rodrich and Juan Carlos Tafur hammered away at the lack of an emotional connection between Flores and the electorate. One of the points they made was that Flores has not reacted to the attacks against her, even vile personal attacks. She has chosen to take the high road and to run a campaign based on optimism and a renewal of hope. I think that the weakness of such a strategy is that it does not allow her to tap into popular sentiment of outrage against the status quo. When Eliane Karp attacked Flores for not knowing what it is like to give birth in the unsafe and unsanitary conditions in which indigenous women live, Flores had the opportunity to attack the frivolity, inefficacy, and indifference of the Toledo government. Yet she did not. Instead, she has allowed Humala and Garcia to monopolize the outrage against Toledo.
The second point I would make is to agree that even APRA’s leaders are unlikely to be able to direct their voters in a second round. That said, one factor that could be important, if not decisive, is the search for governing coalitions. An APRA-UN alliance could well hold a working majority in congress. This could enable the leader of either of those groups to offer the electorate the promise that, if elected to the executive, she or he would be able to command a majority in congress. Jorge del Castillo has already said that he APRA will not make the mistake it made in 1990 when it supported Fujimori in a second round.*
A majority coalition could be helpful to the runner-up because it seems unlikely that the leader of UPP will be able to construct a governing majority. First, he is highly confrontational. Second, he is already talking about a constituent congress or constituent assembly that open the door to a period of serious constitutional crisis. Humala is more likely to want to follow the path of Chavez and to use the process of constitutional reform to centralize executive power and attack the traditional political class.
* “Apra promete estar al lado de la democracia si no pasa a segunda vuelta,” Gestión, 24 de marzo del 2006, p. 6. Del Castillo said: “ha pasado hace 15 años y el outsider (Alberto Fujimori) no resultó ser tan outsider, por el contrario, creo que gobernó con el establishment, con los grupos del poder económico…” He went on to say “Yo creo que es real el peligro antidemocrático, el peligro totalitario es real, no es un invento, entonces, obviamente creo que hay que esperar el desenvolvimiento de la primera vuelta y en la segunda evaluar y sentarse a conversar.”

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Maxwell A. Cameron
March 28, 2006
Ollanta Humala is seeking second round support from parties of the left, especially the Partido Socialista and the Movimiento Nuevo Izquierda. These parties are reluctant, primarily because of the doubts about Humala’s human rights record. Susana Villaran travelled to Madre Mia to hear the testimony of victims of human rights abuses. Humala continues to insist that the judiciary will determine his guilt or innocence. Humala’s human rights sigma will cost him left-wing votes that could matter in a second round.
In an interview in Cuarto Poder on Sunday night, Humala appeared evasive on the issue of his actions as commander of the Madre Mia base. He refused to respond directly to questions about his involvement in specific cases of abuse that form the basis for charges that have been brought against him. He said that Argentine President Néstor Kirchner told him he would not have met with him had there been any doubt about his involvement in human rights abuses. This suggests that Kirchner knows more about what happened in Madre Mia than just about everyone in Peru, or that Humala has misconstrued what Kirchner said. One could imagine Kirchner saying in very diplomatic language that if Humala had committed human rights abuses he would not meet with him. One has to wonder what kind of diplomatic relations Peru will have with neighboring countries if this issue is not clarified before an eventual electoral victory.
In another context, Humala apparently suggested that the judicial investigations into his actions in Madre Mia have found no evidence of wrong-doing. This was reported yesterday night in Cecilia Valenzuela’s Ventana Indiscreta. In fact, the investigations are ongoing and the principals are guarding their silence.
As Rosa Maria Palacios suggested in Prensa Libre last night, Humala has much to gain from telling a credible story about his role in Madre Mia, one that no doubt would cast him in a patriotic light. The continuing evasiveness, however, makes him look guilty.
The reticence of the left has infuriated Humala, who has called its leaders “old cacique” (or bosses) who sabotaged the United Left in the 1980s and were not of the stature of Alfonso Barrantes (mayor of Lima in the 1980s). While the Partido Socialist has been reluctant to ally itself with Humala, there has been some talk of an alliance with Paniagua’s Frente de Centro. Susana Villaran has rejected this possibility.

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According to the Wall Street Journal, the markets have recognized the danger of a victory by Ollanta Humala. The wake-up call came with the publication of the recent APOYO poll on Monday, March 20. This poll was followed by another APOYO poll yesterday confirming the trend. The so-called “Humala effect” resulted in a 4 percent drop in the Lima Stock Exchange index and “sparked a sell-off in the Peruvian sol as well,” according to Mary O’Grady.
A recent meeting between the economic team of the UPP and the Sociedad Nacional de Mineria, Petroleo y Energia (SNMPE) left local business leaders “very worried.”
Some of our readers are financial analysts. Here is what one of them recently wrote to us, on condition of anonymity:
“It seems that Humala’s campaign is gathering a lot of steam. The Peruvian stock market and currency, especially of late, have been selling off on the news. Humala (at least in my eyes and in the eyes of a lot of my friends that manage money and invest in companies that have mining operations in Latin America) brings great uncertainty to the downside. In Peru, I now not only have to worry about the individual merits of the investment, but also the risk that I wake up one morning and Latin America is in disarray because these left leaning countries (including Peru) decide that state run enterprises make more sense. I think the history of nationalization and its chilling effects on long term economic growth and income levels are clear and hopefully even radicals, if they truly have the best interest of the country at heart, understand that it is a mistake. Expropriation is a low probability event, but that probability ticks higher now, which I think will hurt Peru from global capital attraction perspective, at least until Humala can be watched for awhile. Peruvian credit spreads are now trading much wider than countries whose economic and political climate I considered far inferior just a few months ago.
“One could live with higher taxes and a less business friendly environment, especially if somehow these frictional costs on capitalism actually raised the quality of life for the poor and lower classes. From my view, it seems that the Peruvian economy should already be swimming in revenues from what is extracted from mining companies and other natural resource players in the country – a good deal of the problem is not revenues but ineffective governments not redeploying receipts into programs that help uplift the poor (easier said than done I know)…Now, in general commodity prices have been quite strong and nearly all mines should be profitable should these prices hold, so there will be some tolerance on existing investments, but I think the pace of new investment will slow short-term as people like me are unwilling to commit more capital.”

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Maxwell A. Cameron
March 25, 2006
Last night Ollanta Humala attended an event organized by Edmundo Murrugarra, the coordinator of the Education Commission of the Government Plan of the Unión Por el Perú. The event was held under a big “Convention Tent” behind the Hotel Crillón in downtown Lima. Later, Humala led a rally in Comas, on Kilometer 12 of the Tupac Amaru highway that cuts through the northern cone of Lima.

Photo: M.A. Cameron
The evening began with over one thousand people under the tent behind the Crillón listening to campaign music and chanting slogans. One of the songs written for Humala’s campaign talked of the “sad history of Peru,” and “how our riches will be ours” when Humala is elected president. The crowd was primed to respond to the words “In education?” with “Ollanta Revolution!” Humala was late arriving, and the event which was supposed to begin at 6 started after 7 pm.
During the wait someone at the microphone mentioned the presence of the international press, which received a polite applause, something the local press might not have received, as there is great animosity toward the local media in the Humala camp. The editor of “Ollanta Perú” complained bitterly about the local media, saying there would have to be a Venezuela-type crackdown if Humala is elected. The local press was also difficult to manage. They mobbed the podium, delaying the event because they refused for some time to step down so the assembled crowd could also see the speakers.
When Humala finally arrived he was swarmed by enthusiastic supporters and carried forward to the podium where he sat flanked by his team, including VP candidate Gonzalo García. García was the first to speak, and he said that a victory for Humala would initiate a “great transformation” with a “rigorous and concrete” platform for change. “Se siente, se siente, Ollanta Presidente” cheered the crowd (“you can feel it, you can feel it, Ollanta is president”). He then introduced Edmundo Murrugarra, as someone who is honest and combative, as a teacher from Cajamarca, and the person who helped develop the educational program.

Photo: M.A. Cameron
Murrugarra gave a florid speech, very combative and dramatic, with language laced with utopian idealism and calls for sacrifice. Formerly a Senator for the United Left in the 1980s, Murrugarra remains a firebrand. He referred to the dreams of Símon Rodríguez, who accompanied Símon Bolívar, “the Liberator,” in his travels, and said these dreams were being realized by the call for change of the teachers in the movement behind Humala. His discourse was not about the 19th century, however, for he argued that investing in education was necessary to compete in the world today. He ended with a rhetorical flourish, saying to Humala “you have commanded troops, now you must command teachers.”
With that, Humala took the microphone. Appealing to the teachers in the crowd, he said his mother was a teacher and his early memory of her going to work pregnant with him, sitting in the classroom doing his own homework while his mother was teaching in the early evening, is the epitome of dignity in that profession. Referring to himself in the third person, he called for “applause for all of you, not comandante Humala.” He said that as a father he is concerned for the education of his children, and so should the state. Quality education should not be only for the elite. As a soldier he has traveled to the border zones and has seen Peruvian kids who sing the hymn of Colombia or Brazil rather than Peru. 3 million people are illiterate, in the 21st century.

Photo: F. Bazo
Humala argued that voters are getting more sophisticated and cannot be tricked by handing out t-shirts at election time. He told a joke about a politician who goes to a remote area and promises a hospital, and school and a bridge. When told there is no need for a bridge because there is no river in the area, the politician promises to build a river. Rejecting such cynicism, and saying he would not offer “populistoid measures” (medidas populacheras) Humala said people want work with dignity, and dignity means making others respect you. This is the essence of the “great transformation” he proposes. How can you explain to the child of a heroic rondero in Cajamarca that he will not get a good education when the Yanacocha mine is one of the wealthiest gold mines in the world?
It is worth noting that this highly charged image helps explain Humala’s success. The rondero is a symbol of the rural patriot, or “hero,” who has fought for his country. The gold mine symbolizes prosperity and the global economy, and the child the hope for Peru’s future. Some observers have been puzzled by why Peruvians would “jump into the void” given how well the economy is doing. Humala is acknowledging that there is prosperity, and using it to proclaim the need for redistribution.

Photo: M.A. Cameron
The objective of his government would be democratization of education, so that quality education reaches all. He showed the most emotion during his speech when he spoke of children forced to find a living on the streets and asked how the government can be insensitive to this. He then turned on “aged politicians, who have maserated over time,” and lobbies in congress and inside the palace of government who demand “laws with proper names” for the benefit of a few firms or individuals.
Humala said he and his team are challenging powerful interests not out of a suicidal mission, but because it is necessary for the rich to pay their taxes so the state can assume its responsibility, and he called for those who earn more to pay more. He also called for a campaign against corruption and attacked the high incomes of members of congress. He asked the crowd “how much do you teachers earn?” “800 Soles” came back the reply (about $240 US). “800 dollars?” said Humala. “No, Soles!” came back the reply. “How can we accept and trust elites who earn 10,000 dollars?” He then complained that members of congress get 100,000 soles (almost $30,000 US) to move out of their offices at the end of their terms. How much does a teacher get when they move between jobs? Nothing.
Saying that many people have offered him campaign support in return for agreement to favor them with laws once in power, Humala claimed to reject all such deals. “I want to arrive in power without owing anything to anyone.” He then railed against the dog piling on his candidacy that is occurring, saying that there is a “TCO” (a “todos contra Ollanta,” or “all against Ollanta”) movement being born and that there is “political terrorism” being waged against him.
Said Humala: “They say I am anti-system. Yes, I am against the current system of corruption, unemployment, hopelessness. If that is the system, not only am I anti-system, I am a rebel.” “The minority wants to defend their jewelry, their estates. Fear is the last barrier that the elite erect to protect themselves.” These people, he said, want to make this election about democracy or dictatorship. “We have the dictatorship of a minority. In Peru, democracy is poverty.” In contradistinction to this, Humala called for “a democracy of the people.” “We will overcome fear to arrive at the palace…Peru is above these traditional politicians.”

Photo: M.A. Cameron
Later, in Comas, Humala largely repeated the speech, though his delivery was adapted to a crowd of thousands who had, on average, attained a lower level of education. There were a couple of lines in his speech in Comas that stood out, at least to my ears. One was a very direct appeal for voters to cast their ballots for congressional candidates of the UPP. This appeal was made while holding aloft the communal “pot” (or olla) that symbolizes UPP. Clearly, Humala is concerned about the prospect that his presidential ticket does not have congressional coattails. “I want an army of nationalists inside the congress” he said. In similarly militaristic terminology, Humala closed the rally. “I have commanded soldiers” he said. “Now I want to command the people.”

Photo: M.A. Cameron

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Photo: J. Bazo
Oscar Ugarteche, Belissa Andía, Vicente Otta, Sandra Vallenas, Susel Paredes y Víctor Andrés García Belaúnde Velarde
Universidad del Pacifico and Weblog Peru Election 2006 Roundtable “Peru Election 2006: Analysis of Policy Platforms to Support Sexual Diversity”
Maxwell Cameron & Fabiola Bazo
March 20, 2006
Under the auspices of Universidad del Pacifico, a roundtable on “Policy Platforms to Support Sexual Diversity” was held on Friday, March 10, 2006. What follows is a brief summary some of the key issues and conclusions that emerged from the discussion.

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By Maxwell A. Cameron
From Puerto Rico
The appearance of a new figure in Peruvian politics, Ollanta Humala, has led to speculation that this Andean nation might be poised to join South America’s tilt to the left. When social scientists gathered for the International Congress of the Latin American Studies Association in San Juan, Puerto Rico, last week, a major debate broke out over the implications of Humala’s candidacy. Will he win? If so, will he take Peru in the same direction as Venezuela and Bolivia?
A self-styled nationalist who first achieved prominence in an unsuccessful military rebellion against the government of Alberto Fujimori, Humala is currently in first place in the presidential race, with about 32 percent of the decided vote. He is likely to make it into a runoff election, which is required in Peru if no candidate wins 50 percent plus one vote on April 9. According to the latest poll, Humala has a 50 percent chance of winning in a runoff against Lourdes Flores Nano, the conservative candidate of the National Unity alliance.
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 repudiation of the status quo. In this context, the collapse of the once-formidable Peruvian left has created a vacuum that has made the rise of Humala possible. What he represents is anyone’s guess.
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” caused close to 70,000 deaths between 1980 and 2000. Yet the criminal allegations have not derailed Humala’s candidacy.
Why have the accusations of human rights abuses done so little damage to 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 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 passes the 4 percent threshold necessary to win seats in congress. The vacuum on the left helps explain the sudden upsurge of Humala.
Humala claims inspiration from General Juan Velasco Alvarado, the populist and nationalist general who implemented land reform and worker-run cooperatives as part of an effort to establish a corporatist-authoritarian political system in the 1970s. Unlike Velasco, however, 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 Humala is unlikely to be able to pursue a more radical agenda. Peru has neither the indigenous social movements that brought Evo 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 does have the conditions that make for anti-system politics everywhere: miserable poverty, gross inequality, and a growing sense of injustice and hopelessness. The fact that 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 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.

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Maxwell A. Cameron
March 11, 2006
Columnist for Peru21, Ricardo Ramos Tremolada, confirms our analysis that Alan Garcia is directing his attacks on Lourdes Flores in the hopes of eliminating her from contention in the first round and competing with Ollanta Humala in the second round. Garcia presumably expects he would do better against Humala than Flores, and that is what the polls say. However Ramos Tremolada suggests a lot of second round voters would rather vote for Humala in a second round, not out of anti-Aprismo but because they dislike Alan Garcia. He concludes that “All indications are that the next president of Peru will be Ollanta Humala.”
Ramos Tremolada reserves some critical comments for Mirko Lauer, who he says supports Alan Garcia. Lauer’s column in La Republica today also speculates about the possibility of an Humala-Garcia runoff. He notes the tendency of Flores to fall in the polls and the rise of Garcia and Humala (I would say Garcia more than Humala, who has been stable around 25 percent for the last few weeks). Flores has responded to these trends, says Lauer, with the announcment of a campaign to defend her vote in polling stations and by targeting the undecided voter. Humala persists in defending himself against media attacks which are favoring him; and Garcia is promoting a climate of entertainment in his campaign, which seems to be working.

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Maxwell A. Cameron
March 10, 2006
Augusto Álvarez Rodrich says that while anything is possible in the last 30 days of the campaign, it would be a big surprise if there was not a second round with Lourdes Flores, Ollanta Humala or Alan Garcia. I agree with Álvarez Rodrich, and would add that the race between the three is tightening.
The top three candidates have 80 percent of the preferences of the decided voters. The spread between them has been cut in half, however, from around 20 percent to about 10 percent, in the past month. Until recently, Lourdes Flores Nano, the candidate for National Unity, has held a strong lead. She has hovered around 30-35 percent throughout most of the campaign, occasionally slipped below 30 percent or rising as high as 37 or 38 percent. In a recent poll, she stood at 33 percent. Meanwhile Ollanta Humala, who emerged from nowhere to take first spot temporarily in mid-January, has settled at around 25 percent of the vote since then. The most marked tendency in the last few weeks has been the rise of Alan Garcia, who now stands close to Humala with about 22 percent of the vote.

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Maxwell A. Cameron
March 8, 2006
With the election just over a month away, the delays caused by the various legal disputes over who is eligible to run are threatening the electoral calendar.
The National Office of Electoral Processes (ONPE) insists that it cannot begin to print the ballots for the April 9 election until the National Election Board (JNE) finalizes the list of candidates. The JNE claims that they have sent complete lists for 17 of 25 registered electoral groups, but the ONPE says that this information is neither official (it did not come with the official JNE seal) nor can it be used because the printing presses cannot be stopped and started without adding to the cost of production. The total time it will take to print all the ballots is 15 days. The first set of ballots to be distributed are those that go abroad, and these should be ready to go by March 16.
ONPE points out that there are still potentially legal actions pending. The JNE has eliminated 35 candidates from the various lists. One electoral group–Concertacion Decentralista, led by Susana Villaran–is planning on challenging the decision by the JNE to reject 10 of its congressional candidates. They are preparing to take the issue to the Constitutional Tribunal. One of the eliminated candidates on Villaran’s list is Manuel Dammert, who has held legislative office before. He is a heavy-weight in her slate, and his elimination is a serious blow. He has been eliminated because he did not present documentation that he is on unpaid leave of absence from his teaching job. The law says that public officials have to present evidence they are on unpaid leave, but the JNE is interpreting this to mean universities as well. A spokesperson for Concertacion Decentralista says this is contrary to the law. Moreover, as we have reported previously, the JNE decided to require that candidates provide documentation to this effect in a decision published on February 3, only 5 days before the deadline to register.
The deeper background to this issue is that the ONPE is the body that organizes the elections, and the JNE is the legal authority that resolves disputes arising from the election process. In Peru, these two bodies are separate but have had difficulty coordinating.
For its part, the ONPE is also coming under scrutiny for its apparent inability to enforce party finance rules. 27 of 29 of the nation’s political parties have provided information concerning their financing, and this information will be made public on Friday. The ONPE can use this information to inquire about the sources of funding but it has little enforcement ability. Unless donations come from sources with a legal record, there is little the ONPE can do to verify the accuracy of the information provided by the parties.

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Maxwell A. Cameron
March 7, 2006
Alan García and Ollanta Humala have little chance of winning in a runoff against Lourdes Flores. All the available polls suggest that Flores dominates all other candidates in a second round. The reason lies in the very low level of negative rating of Flores. Support for Flores has tended to hover around 35 percent of the electorate nation-wide, and higher in Lima. But very few people say they would never vote for Flores, whereas substantial numbers of voters show strong antipathy to both García and Humala.
It may be that the best chance for García and Humala is to seek to eliminate Flores from contention in the first round. In a runoff between García and Humala, the result is anyone’s guess. Luis Benavente, director of the Grupo de Opinión de la Universidad de Lima, predicts that the final stretch of the campaign will almost certainly involve “negative campaigns” against Flores. Indeed, negative campaigning has already begun. Posters and fliers have begun to appear that present Flores as the candidate of the Banco de Credito. UN spokepersons are drawing parallels with the efforts to tarnish the reputation of Mario Vargas Llosa in 1990 by stressing his links with bankers and the wealthy.

Photo: Expreso, March 6, 2006
Lourdes Flores has complained that these attacks are part of a “dirty war” against her. To this, García has responded by saying “APRA has nothing to do with this [dirty war] for one reason: I say directly that UN represents the right, that it carries within its womb representatives of the bankers…this does not have to be done using a black campaign or with posters.”
Not everyone is of the view that García and Humala would prefer a runoff against each other. In a recent editorial, Augusto Alvarez Rodrich sought to decipher the strategies of candidates based upon whom they would most like to face in a runoff. He concluded that Flores would prefer Humala, Humala would prefer Garcia, and Garcia would prefer Flores.
The daily newspaper Correo, however, reports that APRA strategists are looking at a second round with Humala. Said Jorge del Castillo, Garcia’s right hand man: “I see Lourdes falls 5 percent in a recent poll and Garcia rises 4 percent. In five polls the tendency of Alan Garcia is to rise, and that of Flores is to fall. I am sure we are going into the second round. Until recently, I thought it was with Lourdes. Now I put that in doubt.” The possibility of a runoff between Garcia and Humala is still remote, but you can be sure it is being discussed behind closed doors.
Although Flores has proven unable to generate an upward momentum in her campaign, her performance has, thus far, been formidable. Her best strategy is to hold her lead and not make any major mistakes before April 9. At the same time, she should not be over-cautious. The final weeks will be dynamic, and she will need to be able to respond quickly to deflect attacks–especially from Alan Garcia.

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Maxwell A. Cameron
March 3, 2006
A working breakfast on “Public Electoral Broadcasting and Access to the Media” was held on Thursday, March 1, 2006, 8:00-9:30 am, sponsored by Transparencia and IDEA. This rapporteur’s report summarizes some of the key issues and conclusions to emerge from the discussion. Participants holding public office (see list below) spoke on a not-for-attribution basis.

Photo: J. Bazo
Access to the media for political candidates has dramatically improved since 2000. Under the government of Alberto Fujimori, much of the mass media—especially network television and the popular press—was corrupted. Voters today have a better chance of getting the accurate and diverse sources of information and opinion they need to cast their ballots than they did under the previous regime.
Under Peru’s 2003 Law of Political Parties, all registered political candidates are guaranteed free airtime on both private and public television. This system is called the “franja electoral”—the electoral strip. According to Fernando Tuesta, the franja electoral is an offspring of the 2000 transition; it emerged from the OAS-sponsored dialogue round tables. According to the law, “from 30 days to two days prior to the general elections, political parties have free access, as established in this law, to the media of radio broadcasting and television, of private property or the state, in an electoral strip” (Article 37, Ley 28094: Ley de Partidos Politicos). The idea was to counter the power of money: unless all candidates were given publicly subsidized time on television, the broadcast media would be monopolized by candidates with deep pockets.

Fernando Tuesta and Percy Medina
Photo: J. Bazo
The Law of Political Parties did not, however, adequately address a key problem: how should the franja electoral be financed? It is not in the spirit of the law for the franja electoral to be a lucrative business for television stations. Informing the public is part of the responsibility of the media as publicly chartered and regulated bodies. When the law was being made, however, there was an energetic lobbying effort by the media, as a result of which the law indicates: “The state will compensate the communications media by means of a proportional reduction in the payment of the toll for the use of the radio-electric and electromagnetic spectrum.” In practice, the media have profited from the franja electoral by charging high rates.
Television stations have established rates that they charge for airtime, but these can often be negotiated. The Peruvian government has little capacity to negotiate with the media over the rates the public must pay for the franja electoral, however, especially in the middle of an election campaign. Whereas the government is obliged by the law to provide broadcasting time to the parties, the media are not obliged to accept a particular rate.
The electoral authorities are already running against the clock. It will be impossible to have the franja electoral ready before about March 17 or 18, at least on network television (Channel 7, owned by the state, has already begun the franja electoral). The reasons for this delay have to do with administrative procedures. For one thing, the funding is not yet in place. A permanent commission in the congress is considering the funding issue. There is a proposal to authorize the use of S/. 20 million that was initially appropriated for the electronic voting system prior to its cancellation. [This has been approved. See update here]. This will probably be reallocated to pay for the franja electoral. The delay could cause disagreements among political candidates over what to do in the week in mid-March when the franja is not in operation.
The franja electoral is, in part, designed to ensure a minimum level of equity in media coverage, and to allow the candidates to say more about their proposals than is possible in brief spots. Taylor Boas noted that the typical 30 second spot does not give candidates enough time to convey much of substance, whereas the franja electoral enables them to develop their proposals in greater depth.
According to Percy Medina, research by Transparencia has found that the media has inadequately performed it responsibility to provide crucial information to voters. Only about 8 percent of the coverage of the election in 54 newspapers throughout Peru between January 10 and February 10 dealt with the candidates’ plans for government.
The media have also been criticized by some of the candidates for not providing equitable coverage to all candidates. With 22 presidential candidates and nearly 3,000 candidates running for congress, the media can hardly be expected to provide equal coverage to all contenders. Moreover, the news media in Peru have always had political biases, as do news organizations everywhere. The media cannot afford to ignore their bottom line, which is closely connected to ratings.
That said, as Luis Nunes stressed, there is, with notable exceptions, a lack of balance in television news coverage. Some daily newspapers do not openly endorse candidates, but provide them with protective shields. In the long run, public trust in the media might be reinforced by a clearer separation between the opinions of the owners of the media and the content of news reporting.

Luis Nunes
Photo: J. Bazo
Participants:
Engelbert Barreto Huamán, JNE
Fabiola Bazo, “Peru Election 2006”
Jorge Bazo, “Peru Election 2006”
Taylor Boas, University of California
Luz María Correa, Canadian Embassy
Maxwell A. Cameron, University of British Columbia
Alfonso Chan, ONPE
Percy Medina, Transparencia
Luis Nunes Bertoldo, NDI
Luis C. Seghelmeble Riera, RENIEC
Fernando Tuesta, La Universidad Católica del Perú

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Maxwell A. Cameron
February 26, 2006
Under the auspices of IDEA and Transparencia, a working breakfast on “Military and Police Voters in Peru” was held on Thursday, February 23, 2006. What follows is a brief summary some of the key issues and conclusions to emerge from the discussion. Participants holding public office (see list below) spoke on a not-for-attribution basis.

Photo: J. Bazo
The armed forces and police will vote for the first time in modern Peruvian history in the elections for president, congress, and Andean parliament on April 9, 2006. It is estimated that there are 150,000 potential voters in uniform (roughly 62,000 members of the armed forces, and 87,000 members of the police), but only 84,000 are enumerated on the list of eligible voters.
Of the total potential voters in the armed forces and police, as many as 46,000 may be unable to vote due to assignments on election day. There will be over 4,200 voting stations throughout Peru, and about 10 police or soldiers will be assigned to each station. Military and police personnel may be under orders of restricted mobility, which mean they are obliged to remain at their post (for example, guarding a school where people are voting) during the day. They may not have time during their breaks to make their way to their own polling station before balloting closes.

Enrique Bernales. Photo: J. Bazo
Enrique Bernales emphasized the seriousness of the problem, saying that some members of the military and police have been “given the right to vote but are not permitted to use it.” The issue is especially sensitive since one candidate, Ollanta Humala, is a retired military officer who claims to have support within the armed forces.

Fernando Tuesta. Photo: J. Bazo
Fernando Tuesta said that the extension of the vote to members of the armed forces needs to be accompanied by a scaling back of military involvement in the organization of elections. A smaller number of police and soldiers could protect the perimeter around each polling station rather than being posted in each room where balloting takes place.
A more efficient allocation of military personnel will not solve the problem of members of the armed forces stationed in areas far from home who have not renewed their national identity cards (DNI). Since the election list was closed in December 2005, there is no way for such individuals to vote in this election. However, as Rafael Roncagliolo noted, it is important to identify problems that can be addressed in the post-electoral period. There will be elections in November 2006 for regional and municipal governments, and the list of voters will not be closed until July.

Rafael Roncagliolo. Photo: J. Bazo
Percy Medina suggested that measures could be taken to make is easier and quicker to get a new identity card. Participants recognized that measures to expedite the renewal of identity cards would benefit both civilian and military voters. In addition to the armed forces and police, other potential voters face impediment to the exercise of the suffrage. Prison inmates who have not been sentenced are legally entitled to vote yet there are no polling stations in prisons. Like the military, medical staff and journalists work on election day.

Percy Medina. Photo: J. Bazo
The total number of voters in the military and police is not large in quantitative terms. They amount to one half of one percent of the total electorate of 16.5 million voters. The tighter the margins of electoral victory, however, the more potentially significant their votes could be. The problem is magnified by the possibility that candidates might use the issue seek to discredit the election result. There is, however, no valid public policy justification for assigning priority to the military vote over other impediments to voting such as the estimated 250,000 people in the highlands and jungle areas who do not have birth certificates.
Participants:
Alberto Adrianzén, Comunidad Andina de Naciones
Engelbert Barreto Huamán, Jurado Nacional de Elecciones
Jorge Bazo, “Peru Election 2006” Weblog
Moises Benamor, Organization of American States
Enrique Bernales, Comisión Andina de Juristas
Eric Bertram, Embajada de Canadá
Maxwell A. Cameron, University of British Columbia
Ana Maria Tamayo, Instituto de Defensa Legal
Luz Marina Vera, Organizacion Nacional de Procesos Electorales
Percy Medina, Transparencia
Luis Nunes, Instituto Nacional Democratica
Ronalth Ochaeta, Organization of American States
Rafael Roncagliolo, IDEA
Luis C. Seghelmeble Riera, RENIEC
Fernando Tuesta, La Universidad Católica

Photo: F. Bazo
Fabiola Bazo and Maxwell A. Cameron
February 23, 2006
Ollanta Humala, candidate for Union Por el Peru (UPP), and his wife Nadine Heredia participated in a meeting with the Asociación de Prensa Extranjera en el Perú (APEP) in the Hotel Los Delfines in Lima this morning. Humala made a short introduction describing his latest trip to the North of Peru and complaining about the lack of balanced coverage from the local media.
Humala admitted that his organization is very new, and as a result many people have been attracted to it because they see the other parties and alliances as closed to newcomers. He also claimed to be the victim of an intense campaign against him in which the media have played a key role.
Humala emphasized the need for national control over natural resources. He declined to state specifically what level of state participation there should be in the natural resource sector, saying it depends on the project, prices, and capacity of the public sector. “We don’t need to be at the wheel, but we do need to be on this boat” he said.
Regarding the Free Trade Agreement with the US, Humala said more information should be available concerning the agreement and any parallel accords that might be involved; there should be a public debate; and, if the society is divided on the issue, a referendum; above all, that the existing congress should not approve the treaty because it does not have the moral backing. His own assessment of the FTA is that it would be negative for certain productive sectors, especially in agriculture.
Humala was put in the spot a couple of times. He was asked about his position on gay marriage, abortion and the appointment of a gay person in his cabinet. With regard to gay marriage, Humala said he does not believe in gay marriage but would approve legal unions among homosexual couples along the lines of the policy in France. Humala was clear that he would appoint a gay person to his cabinet if this person was capable.
With regard to abortion. He stated it was women’s issue and a personal one. He was not against it or in favour, but called attention to the social causes of unwanted pregnancies. He is a strong believer of death penalty for those who abuse minors.
Humala was also asked about the charges against him concerning human rights abuses when he was a militar officer in Alto Huallaga in 1992. He said he is innocent of these charges. “I have not violated human rights,” he said. He did not deny that his accusors have had relatives disappeared, and implied that the accusations against him may be motivated by the desire to use the publicity to get answers. He pointed out that the military keeps records, whereas the Shining Path did not, making it harder to know what happened to Shining Path people who were killed and also hard to know who was with the Shining Path and who was not.
Humala said he had not killed or tortured anyone outside of combat, that he had not committed to crimes of which he has been accused. (“Yo no he matado ni torturado a nadie que no sea en combate…No he cometido los delitos que me imputan”). He operated in a zone that was in strategic equilibrium with the Shining Path–that is, the Shining Path had the same arms and personnel as the army in that area. He also claimed the final report of the Truth Commission did not identify him as a human rights abuser. He also said that if he is elected in April 9th, he would let the judicial processes against him continue because “no one is above the law.”
Ollanta Humala vs. Cecilia Valenzuela. A tense moment during the meeting occurred during an exchange between Humala and journalist Cecilia Valenzuela. Humala refused to answer any of her questions until she apologized to his wife Nadine for a humorous report in dubious taste aired in La Ventana Indiscreta last night. Valenzuela apologized for any offense taken. Humala asked his wife if she was satisfied with the apology. Heredia demanded a public apology in La Ventana Indiscreta, which Valenzuela accepted. After this exchange, Humala answered Valenzuela’s question which concerned whether he would meet with Teresa Avila to respond to her allegations. Humala answered that would politicized the process. He would be willing to testify before a judge or be jailed, but he would not be part of a “publicitary show.”
Humala acknowledged that he was trained in the School of the Americas. This is a point that was mentioned by Sofia Macher in an interview in La Ventana Indiscreta with Cecilia Valenzuela in the context of a discussion of the charges against Humala. Humala argued that the fact that this fact should not be taken out of context. His entire graduating class went through the program, which lasted only 6 weeks.
There is a definite evolution in Humala’s response to the human rights issue. Whether this is a coherent strategy or a process of muddling through is unclear. His initial posture seemed evasive to many analysts. He claimed to be innocent and refused to enter into details. Now he is saying he has not killed anyone outside of combat, but he acknowledges there were disappearances which may or may not have occurred in combat. He claims that he too suffered loss in the war, including a cousin. In his view, the family of victims may be using his candidacy as blackmail to get answers. He still refuses, however, to provide details about his actions in Madre Mia and now uses the legal charges against him as a pretext. At some point in the campaign, however, he will almost certainly have to provide an account of his actions.
The session ended with a question about what Humala will do in the likely event that he is not elected. Humala insisted that he expects to do well and senses that he is in good shape in terms of popular support. He would not speculate about losing. Humala’s answers show he is thinking in terms of how his replies will look when printed in the papers said one journalist at the event.

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Maxwell A. Cameron
February 23, 2006

Photo: M.A. Cameron
February 22 was the 111th anniversary of the birth of Víctor Raúl Haya de la Torre, the founder of the American Popular Revolutionary Alliance (APRA). Members of the APRA party, or Apristas, refer to this as the Day of Fraternity, and in Lima they typically celebrate with a mass in the San Francisco Church in the historic center of Lima. Following the mass, the faithful gathered in the Óvalo de Breña to reaffirm their commitment to the party and to listen to Alan García Pérez rally support for the election campaign.

Photo: M.A. Cameron
Mercedes Cabanillas was the first speaker to warm up the crowd. She launched an impassioned attack on Lourdes Flores, the leader of National Unity, who she characterized as the candidate of the rich. “We don’t want a Trojan horse with a woman’s skirt hiding entrepreneurs within its womb,” she said. Mauricio Mulder followed with a denunciation of the judiciary for releasing a member of President Alejandro Toledo’s family on a suspended sentence for rape. Such lenient and politically-motivated judges, he warned, “would be called to account before congress.” He emphasized that APRA is an organized party, and its internal order is a guarantee of security.

Photo: M.A. Cameron
Alan García’s vice presidential candidate, Luis Giampietri received a lukewarm reception and his brief statement received sustained applause only when he mentioned Haya de la Torre. It was as if the crowd was pleased to hear the newcomer stress his attachment to the historic leader. Giampietri’s claim that he joined García’s slate because he was concerned about threats to the rights of the military personnel, however, had little resonance. APRA has a long history of persecution by the military and the rights of the military would not seem to be a major concern of the rank and file.

Photo: M.A. Cameron
The warmest reception went to Jorge del Castillo, who joked that a recent poll showing a technical tie between García and Ollanta Humala was old news: “we passed that guy a while ago” he said, “we are in the second round for sure.” He also noted that APRA has beat out Lourdes Flores before.

Photo: M.A. Cameron
Del Castillo said that APRA has parliamentary unity and discipline. The party enters congress on July 28 and leaves on July 28 five year later with the same number of members. This distinguishes APRA from other, more loosely organized parties, most of which tend to disintegrate when they get into congress. By contrast, APRA has no turncoats or traitors.
Del Castillo belittled efforts at renovation in other parties, saying inexperienced newcomers are no guarantee of quality. Who wants a “brand new rapist” or “brand new ‘for God and money’”? The latter is an allusion to a member of congress who, in a memorable Freudian slip, accidentally swore to “God and money” rather than “God and the homeland” when he took the oath of office. His subsequent parliamentary career has been marked by scandal and allegations of nepotism. Del Castillo then led the audience in a collective renewal of their vows as members of APRA.

Photo: M.A. Cameron
Following Del Castillo, García took the podium and gave one of the impassioned and dramatic speeches for which he is justly famous. He summarized highlights of the life of Haya de la Torre, emphasizing that APRA is not just an electoral machine. It is an organization that looks to the distant future (the next 40 years, not the next 40 days). The APRA is part of the history of the Peruvian people, he said, so that where the Peruvian people exist, there is the APRA. There was an almost spiritual quality to his invocation of the name of Haya de la Torre, who he said would descend to the people who live APRA’s doctrine with true conviction.
A central theme of García’s speech was that you cannot destroy APRA. It would be fair to say that APRA is the only party running in this election as a party. García said that APRA has existed for 75 years in spite of persecution by Manuel Odría in the 1950s, the military government in the 1970s, and Alberto Fujimori in the 1990s. “APRA never dies,” chanted the crowd. Moreover, García suggested that APRA is the most organized party in Peru, and thus the party best able to carry out radical change. In an allusion to the candidacy of Ollanta Humala, García said that the Peruvian people like to flirt with other candidates but in the end alway return to their true love, the APRA.

Photo: M.A. Cameron
Another theme was experience. García confessed to mistakes, but “always in favor of the people.” Moreover, he stressed, “from errors one learns how to better serve.” Errors, in short, are part of experience, and APRA has the experience to “fulfill its commitment to serve 100 percent.” “Alan Sí Puede” chanted the crowd in response.
García’s speech operated at a number of levels, and synthesized diverse themes. At one point he referred to APRA as a “movimiento cobrizo popular” (“popular, copper-tone movement.” The term “cobriza” is an ethnic reference used by Humala). At another point he said “vamos a trabajar y ayudar a trabajar” (“we will work and help others to work.” The phrase “work and let work” comes from Fernando Belaúnde Terry’s Popular Action party).
Part of García’s strategy is to highlight his difference with Lourdes Flores Nano, whose campaign has emphasized character and building trust, but has not involved making specific commitments. García has made many small, unspectacular, but very concrete commitments. On this occasion, for example, he offered to promote internal tourism by allowing firms to write off expenses for travel by their employees within Peru. Currently, such expenses can be written off only if the travel is abroad. He also promised to establish the dates for long weekends in advance so that people have the chance to make travel plans around long weekends. Currently, long weekends are often announced just days in advance.

Photo: M.A. Cameron
García made it clear that there is a lot at stake in this election for his generation of leaders. This is almost certainly his last chance. The election will also be a test of the strength of the only well-organized, well-financed, and disciplined political party in Peru.

The Fujimori Legacy: The Rise of Electoral Authoritarianism in Peru. Edited by Julio F. Carrión, Associate Professor of Political Science and International Relations at the University of Delaware.

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Maxwell A. Cameron
February 22, 2006
In a meeting with the foreign press, Javier Diez Canseco, candidate of the Socialist Party, outlined his initiative to submit the recently negotiated Free Trade Agreement between Peru and the United States to a referendum. Diez Canseco is working with a network of civil society organizations, unions, and parliamentary leaders to prevent the FTA from being approved in the current legislature, which will reopen in March.

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Maxwell A. Cameron
February 19, 2006

Photo: M.A. Cameron
In an astute analysis, respected constitutionalist and former senator Enrique Bernales argues that it is becoming clear that Humala has an intelligent strategy with respect to accusations that he was known in 1992 as “Captain Carlos,” the chief of a military base in Madre Mia who allegedly committed human rights abuses. Faced with insistent demands by the press and other candidates, Humala has acknowledged that he went by the nom de guerre “Carlos,” but he denies that he was “Captain Carlos Gonzales.” Beyond these admissions, he insists that further information must come from the Ministry of Defense. This has put the minister, Marciano Rengifo, in the hot seat—and he is not taking the heat well.
Given that the allegations of human rights abuse were made in the third week of January, one might have assumed that by now we would have a response from the Ministry of Defense indicating whether Humala was, indeed, the Captain Carlos who ran the Madre Mia base. However, for weeks the Minister of Defense has refused to address the issue. In an interview in Caretas this week (February 16, 2006, pp. 14-17, we reproduced the interview on February 17), Rengifo, stonewalled, evaded, and obfuscated questions about Humala. In a tone that could only be described as insolent, the Minister said, in effect, there is nothing to investigate; only Humala can answer the question; the army does not use operative pseudonyms and there is no list of such names.
Democracy requires supremacy of elected civilian officials over the armed forces. A key principle of constitutional democracy is that the armed forces are non-deliberative and obedient. Peru’s inability to achieve civilian supremacy is reflected in the tradition of appointing military men to run the defense ministry. Rengifo is a retired army general, so not surprisingly his actions are being interpreted as evidence of esprit de corps. Given that there is less than two months of campaign time left, the information concerning Humala needs to be clarified in short order. Not only has Rengifo stonewalled on this matter of highest urgency, he has accused human rights NGOs—such as the Coordinadora Nacional de Derechos Humanos, which has threatened to denounce the Ministry of Defense for failing to provide information about Captain Carlos—of waging a “war on the Ministry of Defense”! Such language is surely inappropriate under any circumstance, all the more so when the NGOs are demanding information that is vital to the election. The question, however, is why the stonewalling? This is where Bernales’ article gets interesting.
Bernales suggests that Humala has figured out that he can close ranks with the military which does not want to expose itself to closer scrutiny of its actions in Alto Huallaga in 1992. Any revelations concerning Captain Carlos would require some acknowledgement of responsibility of the armed forces. To this day, the “party line” in the armed forces is that, as Renfigo put it in Caretas, “excesses occur in any war. But these excesses have to be taken individually.” In his view, the Truth Commission is wrong: “I reject it profoundly,” said Renfigo, “because it says there was a policy of systematic violation of human rights during the war against terrorism.” For someone who thinks the Truth Commission was wrong, that any violations of human rights occurred as a result of individual excesses, any investigation into the actions of an individual officer that might expose a policy of human rights abuses would be embarrassing.
By closing ranks with the military, Humala is passing the buck. He is saying that the generals designed the strategy, gave the orders, and placed pseudonyms on officers to hide their identities. By revealing Capitain Carlos’s identity, the chain of command would be exposed, pointing to superior officers who failed to mark the distinction between legitimate military operations and actions involving abuses of human rights. Humala, in other words, is counting on the esprit de corp of the military to prevail over democratic accountability.
What Bernales does not say, but which Fernando Rospigliosi notes in an editorial reprinted below, is that Humala’s strategy is not only part of an intelligent legal defense, but also part of an evolving electoral strategy. Rospigliosi is a distinguished analyst of the Peruvian armed forces who served as Minister of the Interior under Toledo. He is unfair when he says that in recent declarations Humala did not deny that he participated in human rights crimes. If we read the report to which Rospigliosi refers, Humala does nothing of the sort. Humala has has repeatedly insisted that he has committed no such crimes. It is true, however, as Rospigliosi says, that Humala has begun to insinuate that the individuals who have come forward to accuse him of violating human rights are or were associated with the Shining Path.
What Humala said was “It seems to me unfair that the truth is told only half way and that there is no investigation of how who were these people who were supposedly victims of violence. Who were they in these years of war with the Shining Path?” Does this work as an electoral strategy? According to Rospigliosi, Nadine Humala, Ollanta’s wife, recently criticized human rights NGOs for not caring about the poor and only defending the rich.
We also have to add another element, which is that Humala’s strategy may well involve insisting that he was a patriotic soldier who followed orders. Political blame should fall on the politicians who sent the military to fight a war without a clear political strategy. Thus, Humala says of the war, in obvious allusion to Alan García in particular, “those most responsible were some candidates to the presidency who took the decision to abandon he emergency zones as a state, and hand them over to the armed forces. These politicians sent soldiers to fight where they did not know what to do.”
All of this fits with something palpable in the thinking of Humala’s supporters, and which helps explain Humala’s so-called “Teflon.” Namely, that the war with the Shining Path has left this country so deeply divided about the issue of responsibility for the violence that allegations of human rights abuses are taken with a grain of salt by Humala’s supporters.
Human rights abuses were committed by the armed forces, as exhaustively documented by the Truth Commission, because the armed forces were given political cover by the government of Fujimori to fight the war any means necessary. The enthusiastic support received by Alberto Fujimori, even as he built a political regime that guaranteed impunity, was based on this complicity. Thus allegations that Humala, as Captain Carlos, committed human rights abuses in this war do not necessarily rock his public support, or ruin his image.
The real question is whether Humala can construct a narrative about his role in Madre Mia in which he emerges as a patriotic soldier—something not entirely inconsistent with the allegations against him, at least in the collective conscience of this battered nation.

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By Fabiola Bazo
February 19, 2006
Signs of socio-economic exclusion form an inescapable part of everyday life in Lima. Poverty is in-your-face. The macroeconomic boom, far from diminishing the problem, has only made the gap between rich and poor more conspicuous. A large number of people not only perceive little tangible improvement in their socio-economic conditions, they have lost hope that things will change. Lacking any unemployment insurance or social security, not only the indigent but even members of the impaupered middle class live with the constant fear that their lives could be destroyed by sudden illness or unemployment.
If there is one reason for Alejandro Toledo’s low level of approval, it is that he awoke hope that his government would create employment and reduce poverty. There have been, as Mirko Lauer notes, 60 months of sustained growth and this has been a bonanza for large firms, which have seen their profits swell, but all the abundance has had remarkably little impact in the pocket books of the majority of workers and employees.
Although Peru is experiencing impressive levels of economic growth, not only is the wealth not trickling down, it seems to be trickling-up. Jorge Bruce argues that the current election campaign should make a space for debate on the economic model. He argues that social exclusion is not an economic problem, but a political and ethical one, and calls for research on the gaps between the profits earned by shareholders of large firms and the earnings or workers. Are the earnings of workers and employees in those parts of the economy that are booming adequate to cover basic needs, like education, health and housing?
Santiago Pedraglio discusses the “Agreement for Social and Responsible Mining,” where representatives from local governments, mining networks, NGOs, entrepreneurs and large mining companies, got together to sign an accord for sustainable development and strategic partnership. This agreement is a potentially significant step toward acknowledging that inequality, extreme poverty and exclusion are obstacles to sustainable development.
In a sad commentary on public officials, Pedraglio argues that the views inherent in this agreement are more democratic and inclusionary than those held by public administrators in the Ministries of Finance, Energy and Mines, and the Prime Minister’ Office. Those holding a government position (either by election or appointment) show a lack of vision and initiative in tackling the limitations of the current economic model. That is why it is so disturbing to see electoral platforms that lack convincing policy ideas for how to deal with the socio-economic exclusion most Peruvian face. If we add to this lack of political will to challenge the status quo, the fact the Peruvian state lacks instruments to redistribute wealth (labour legislation, a fair tax system, social security), Peru may face social unrest in the future no matter who gets elected.

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Maxwell A. Cameron
February 17, 2006

Photo: M.A. Cameron
Ollanta Humala, the nationalist candidate for Unión Por el Perú, chose Las Malvinas, an old factory district that has been reconverted into a sort of industrial park for small businesses, to drive home his message that Peru needs to promote national production based on the domestic market to generate employment and a more equitable distribution of wealth.

Photo: M.A. Cameron
Avenida Argentina used to be a major industrial center where thousands of workers found full time, unionized employment. When the economic crisis of the 1980s gutted the factory sector, thousands of workers were laid off. Many found precarious employment in the informal sector. The area of Avenida Argentina known as Las Malvinas, in the center of Lima, was overrun by the black market. Today, there is still evidence of black market activity: someone offered me a cell phone as I walked down the street. Even the relatively formal market activity operates in the grey area between legal and illegal. I bought a New York Yankees cap for 5 soles (about US $1.50) that was clearly made in Peru, though there was no tag to indicate where or by whom. I doubt the Yankees got their royalties.

Photo: M.A. Cameron
The plan was for supporters of the comandante to gather in the market place around 10:00 am. The notice of the meeting was spread by “radio bemba,” or word-of-mouth. The secretaries of organization of various base committees were notified, and they sent out the word to their supporters. “We don’t have a lot of resources,” said one Humalista, “our resource is our presence.” Supporters arrived by combi (microbuses) or on foot, carrying placards and banners, pamphlets and flags. Within about an hour, the crowd had growth to two or three hundred people. Most conspicuous were the retired or reserve military officers in bright red shirts who formed the security detail for the meeting. “Don’t worry,” said one of the red shirts to the four rather conspicuous observers in my party, “we’ll watch out for you.”

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One of the first on the scene was Rosa Dueñas, candidate number 13 to the Andean Parliament. Dueñas was a council member in Lima when Alfonso Barrantes was mayor back in the 1980s. She was a founder of the Vaso de Leche, a popular program which offered a glass of milk to every poor child in the shantytowns of Lima. She has worked for years with battered women and for indigenous women’s rights. Today, she is with Humala.

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She said she could not support Lourdes Flores because whenever she approached Flores’ office in congress in her capacity as a leader of indigenous women, she could never get in the door. “What happened to the left?” I asked. “Nobody was willing to sacrifice hegemony,” she said. “Everyone wanted to be a leader, so there was no unity.” Today there are four mini-parties of the left, which collectively claim about 5 percent of the electorate according to the polls. Unless trends change, not one of them is likely to cross the 4 percent threshold necessary to win parliamentary representation. This vacuum has created an opportunity for someone like Humala.

Photo: M.A. Cameron
I asked Dueñas whether she was bothered by the accusations that Humala has committed human rights abuses. Her response says a lot about Humala’s “Teflon”: “he is part of the people,” she said. She then described a massive meeting in Huaycán yesterday evening, which received little attention in the print media, in which Humala spoke out against the violence that the Shining Path had caused. Huaycán was one of the neighborhoods in Lima where the Shining Path not only established a foothold, but where they acted with great viciousness. For example, Pascuala Rosado, a prominent local leader, was killed by the Shining Path in Huaycán. According to Dueñas, and others with whom we spoke, Humala’s condemnation of the Shining Path was well received. It is becoming clear that Humala’s response to the allegations of his involvement in human rights crimes will be to emphasize his patriotic service in the fight against the Shining Path. According to Dueñas, Humala has scars from the war that he will reveal later in the campaign.
Another person responded to the same question by saying that the Shining Path committed many abuses, and Humala has the merit of having fought against them. Moreover, whereas the soldiers were uniformed, the Shining Path blended into the trees and that made it hard to fight them. In a not-so-subtle way, human rights abuses are justified in this framing of the issue. Might the very population that was the target of human rights abuses excuse these abuses as long as they see the perpetrator as among “the people”?
Such is the enormous complexity of the conflict that Peru has undergone that it may be possible for people to believe, on the one hand, that the Shining Path, though condemnable, was opposed to an unjust order, and, on the other hand, that the military, whose duty was to defend the country, committed grave abuses. Someone holding these conflicting views might be prepared to overlook crimes committed by a soldier in this war, even—or perhaps especially—if the person in question was a target of violence during the war, provided the actions are construed in such a way as to place the perpetrator on the side of the people.
In this sense, the real challenge for Humala is not to deny that he committed abuses, which more people believe to be true than believe to be false, but to present himself as a defender of the people. That he committed abuses may be less important than whether such abuses can be somehow assimilated into a story in which Humala is cast in the role of defender of “the people.”
Consider the story of one of Humala’s supporters, who expressed frustration bordering on desperation and rage. There is a sense of desperation that comes from not knowing how to provide the next meal, from not knowing how to provide a better future to one’s children. The woman I spoke with came from a base committee in Comas. Originally from Huánuco, an area afflicted by terrorism, she arrived in Lima at the age of 18 in 1984. She found work for a year as a domestic employee in the residence of an ambassador, but since then has been unable to find steady work. Her son, now 17 and unable to find employment, is about to join the army. “People want a civil war with big capitalists” she said. Slightly shocked, I commented that nearly 70,000 people died in a civil war between 1980 and 2000. She backtracked a bit and then said “if Humala does not win, there will be civil war.” She went on to say that Peru needs a military leader like Humala, because only such a strong leader could change Peru, impose order so that there are not so many prostitutes, beggars, and thieves, and force big business to pay taxes. As for whether Humala may have committed abuses, if so he was only carrying out orders.
Another fact that may attenuate the effect of accusations of human rights abuses is the view that poverty is an abuse of the human right to a minimum level of wellbeing that does not exist for half of Peru’s population. Insofar as Humala has created the expectation that he will do something about poverty, the criticisms of human rights abuses may be muted. Last week a worker was killed when he was crushed by concrete during excavation in a building project. The site was unsafe, and a wall collapsed due to vibrations caused by a passing bus. This came up as an example of the daily injustices suffered by Peru’s poor.

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A bit before noon, Humala finally arrived, phalanxed by his own bodyguards who, we were assured, were well armed. Yet he seemed vulnerable in what immediately became a mob scene in which scores of supporters pressed in to shake his hand and offer their encouragement. Humala seemed to revel in the attention as he moved through the market place greeting vendors and bystanders. We were witness to highly enthusiastic, spontaneous expressions of support. For his part, Humala comes across as an ordinary Joe.

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When he reached a central location, Humala, surrounded by perhaps two hundred people (the rest of his supporters being outside, on the street), was handed a microphone from which to speak. He could not be seen by the crowd, however, nor heard because the spectators would not tone down. Someone brought a stool, and Humala was lifted up to speak. After a lengthy applause, Humala was at last able to make a brief speech.

Photo: M.A. Cameron
The content was simple, and clearly directed at the audience. Peru needs more national production based on the internal market. He congratulated the local vendors, the small and medium entrepreneurs in the market, for their efforts, and insisted on the need for a redistribution of income. At one point, someone yelled out a taunt against SODIMAC, a Chilean company, part of the conglomerate that owns Falabella, which sells home hardware and construction materials—the direct competitor of Las Malvinas.

Photo: M.A. Cameron
After the speech, Humala proceeded to walk down the street, and through various other markets before getting into his car—a now familiar maroon SUV—and heading off.
While there is a lot of diversity in the ideas expressed by Humala’s grassroots supporters, a key theme that emerged in many conversations was control over natural resources. One Humalista stated that Canadians are destroying humanity within their mining activities. A very thoughtful, university-educated supporter of Humala intervened and suggested that one should not generalize from the activities of a few companies to an entire country. Clearly, however, control over natural resources is a major unifying theme. “Gas is cheaper in Chile, and they import” complained another nationalist.
Humala’s supporters appear to be quite convinced that public opinion polls are deeply flawed, biased in favor of Lourdes Flores, and as inaccurate in Peru as they were in Bolivia where Evo Morales was elected in the first round to the surprise of those who, following the polls, expected him to fall 10 percent short of the mark. “We are the power now,” (nosotros somos poder ya) confidently proclaimed one leader. Indeed, the popular support for Humala seems to have been a big surprise to the nationalists. One party organizer, a leader of the “National Association of Lawyers” for Humala, said that support for his leader has been “alluvial.” The original intention was to build a party to support a candidate for 2011, but the pressure of the masses forced them to enter the race. Carmen Rosa Balbi, who teaches sociology at the Catholic University in Peru, observed Humala’s walk through Las Malvinas. Balbi has written extensively on working class politics and protest, and she was struck by the enthusiasm and apparent spontaneity of the support shown for Humala. She also noted the coherence of Humala’s discourse, which seemed to be music to the ears of his audience in Las Malvinas.

Photo: M.A. Cameron

Maxwell A. Cameron
February 12, 2006
In broad-brush strokes, the recent APOYO poll confirms the main trends that have recently been observable in the election process. The survey has been much anticipated because it covers both rural and urban areas, includes 2,000 respondents, was conducted by the most respected polling firm in Peru, and was commissioned and is distributed by the nation’s leading newspaper, El Comercio.
The poll finds that the candidacy of Ollanta Humala, which reached as high as 32 percent in the polls in early January, has stalled at around 25 percent. Front-runner Lourdes Flores has sustained a strong 10 percent point lead over Humala for the past fortnight, while García has flat-lined with about 17 percent support. Nothing here is especially unexpected.
The most novel and interesting information to be gleaned from the APOYO poll lies in the details.
In the first place, it is important to note what has not happened. Humala has not been destroyed by the allegations that he committed human rights abuses in Madre Mia in 1992 (for a summary of the allegations, see the commentary by Fernando Rospigliosi below). The last APOYO poll was conducted on Wednesday to Friday, the 25th to the 27th of January, shortly after the first denunciation of human rights abuses were aired by Panorama on Sunday January 22. Afterwards, on Sunday January 29, there were further reports in Panorama, Reporte Semanal. In addition, newspapers like La Republica carried stories on Humala’s alleged human rights abuses on the Sunday and Monday of February 5-6. Peru.21 also published photos of Humala in Madre Mia on Tuesday and Wednesday of February 7-8, which coincides with this poll (conducted on Wednesday to Friday, February 8-10). Notwithstanding the seriousness of these denunciations, the support for Humala has dropped by only 2 points between the two polls. It may have dropped more if the January 27 poll, conducted only in cities, underreported support for Humala.
Only 9 percent of those who were interviewed had not heard the allegations against Humala. 41 percent said they thought the accusations were true, while 28 percent thought they were false, and 22 percent did not answer the question. Here there is clearly room for hardening of opinion—either in the direction of greater conviction that Humala is guilty or that he is innocent or it does not matter.
The gap between Humala and García has narrowed from 11 to 8 percent, as Humala has slipped from 27 to 25 percent and García has risen from 16 to 17 percent. There is now a race for second place between these two candidates (see commentary in La Republica by Carlos Reyna below). This explains, in part, Humala’s attack on Garcia (he should step aside because he has already had the chance to govern) and García’s angry response (Humala should turn himself into the authorities for his human rights abuses).
Martha Chávez has consolidated her position as the number 5 candidate. She now has about 6 percent, placing her just behind Paniagua who has slid from 10 to 8 percent. Paniagua’s slide was predictable and may be irreversible. Chávez is unlikely to emerge as a strong contender, but she may be taking back Fujimorista votes that were bleeding to Humala at an earlier stage. Chávez may be taking a small number of feminine votes from Flores.
Flores is the front-runner almost entirely by virtue of her popularity with women. She has a whopping 43 percent of the female vote, while Humala is the narrow front-runner among men with 31 percent of the male vote. Gender is turning out to be a major factor in this election. Flores also has a big plurality of the youth vote (40 percent of those between 18 and 24 years of age), and has 43 percent of the support of those living in Lima, compared with 20 percent for Humala in the metropolitan capital.
If gender is a factor, so is region. Humala is strongest in the southern and central highlands and the jungle, where he has 44, 36 and 30 percent respectively. Flores dominates Arequipa and the southern coast, and does well in the northern highlands, with 40 percent and 28 percent respectively. García’s strength remains in the “solid north,” the only place where he is in contention for first spot with 30 percent. Overall, the support for Flores across the country is impressive. Only in the southern highlands is she really behind with only 20 percent (less than half Humala’s support).
The battlegrounds regions are: the north (Flores vs. García); the northern highlands (all three front runners are close); the central highlands (Humala vs. Flores); and the jungle (Flores vs Humala).
Perhaps more than gender and region, however, the polarization in this election is around class. As one moves from the wealthier to the poorer strata (from groups A to E in the categories used by public opinion polling), support for Flores gets weaker–from 65 percent in A, to 44 percent in B, and roughly one third (between 33 and 31 percent) of the vote in the groups C through E. The inverse holds for Humala. He has the support of only 6 percent in A, 15 in B, and between 23 and 32 percent in C through E. The war between Humala and Flores will be fought by votes in C, D, and E, the vas majority of the electorate.
There is something about the socioeconomic breakdown of this poll that is puzzling. For all the candidates except Humala and Flores, the overall level of support is something roughly equivalent to the mean score in the votes in sectors D and E. For example, Paniagua has 9 percent in D, 7 percent in E, and his overall support is 8 percent. The same is true for Chávez and García. Yet the overall support for Humala and Flores is closer to the mean between groups C and D. Flores has 35 percent overall, which is slightly above the mean of her vote in sectors C and D. I am a little surprised that she has 35 percent overall when she does not reach that level in C, D, or E. Her overwhelming support in sectors A and B must explain the difference. Humala, on the other hand, has an overall support level of 25 percent even though his support in sectors D and E (presumably the largest groups) is 29 and 32 percent.
The obvious question is how well does the sample map onto the actual socioeconomic structure of the country?

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Maxwell A. Cameron
February 9, 2006
In a meeting with the Asociación de Prensa Extranjera en el Perú (APEP) in the Hotel Los Delfines in Lima, Lourdes Flores Nano, candidate for the National Unity alliance, argued that this election is about character and the need to restore trust and hope in politics. She said her campaign emphasizes her closeness to people, and establishes direct contact with voters as much as possible. It also emphasizes her personal attributes of hard work, integrity, and the ability to listen. This came in response to a question from a journalist who suggested that her campaign, unlike the campaign of APRA’s Alan García, does not focus on concrete specifics, but rather emphasizes macro issues. Flores said she thinks the campaign will not be driven by issues, and, in response to a question about her ties to powerful groups in the economy and the media, she repeated the point that her campaign has been “hyper-personal,” one of closeness and direct, personal dialogue.

Photo: M.A. Cameron
Flores said she has sought to address the hopelessness that characterizes the present moment. As a female candidate she feels she can generate some hope through her own credibility and empathy. This is a small advantage, she admitted, but it is important in the current climate of skepticism. As a woman, she would bring a different sensibility to politics, a different way of doing things. This would imply, for one thing, a combination of responsible economics with an emphasis on social policy change. Flores made her now familiar claim that Peruvians are tired of waiting for economic benefits to trickle down, she proposed policies to overcome social exclusion—including modernization of agriculture, promotion of small and medium sized business, and encouragement of tourism—and she argued that the state must be both strong and efficient.
In response to the argument that gender is an advantage she possesses in this campaign, one reporter asked whether not being a mother was a disadvantage. Flores said that, yes, she breaks the traditional mold. Normally people think of a politician as being a man of a certain age, married with children. However, her status as a single woman means that she can devote her energies fully to her work. This answer rings true, and may tap into some powerful sentiments among women. The claim is that if you are a woman in politics you are better off being single. A man with wife and children could devote himself entirely to politics and nobody would ask why he was not a more devoted family man. A woman is not granted that luxury, and hence faces the “double day” problem. If Peru is to have a woman for president, it is probably best that it be a single woman.
Flores’ strong emphasis on her own personal qualities reflects, in part, the deep disenchantment with political parties in the electorate. Her emphasis on hard-work and integrity is reminiscent of Alberto Fujimori, whose campaign slogan in 1990 was “honesty, technology, and work” (characteristics that were seen as attributes of people of Japanese ancestry). There is also evidence in Flores’ thinking of learning from the mistakes of the Vargas Llosa campaign–a campaign in which she participated. Vargas Llosa came off as aloof from voters, and as a politician who did not offer hope.
Vargas Llosa’s name came up in another occasion.
A question posed to Flores was whether she is being hurt by the perception of being closely tied to powerful economic interests and to the media, something that damaged Vargas Llosa in 1990 and allowed Fujimori to emerge as an insurgent candidate late in the campaign. Flores said that she has not been favored by the media, in fact she has been subjected to tough criticism. She also reiterated that she is not remote from the people. Her campaign style, which involves traveling the length and breadth of the country, is reminiscent of electoral campaigns of the 1950s.
The second time Vargas Llosa’s name was mentioned was in a question about the second round. Flores was realistic about the unlikelihood of winning in the first round, and said that the period between the first and second round would be critical in terms of establishing the kinds of alliances necessary to govern. She came close to entering the second round in 2001, and demonstrated her ability to win votes across sectors, so she can be confident that the sort of “anyone but Vargas Llosa” campaign that happened after the first round in 1990 would not be repeated. In 1990 there were disciplined parties—the left and APRA—that were able to direct their voters against the front-runner. In this election, there will be voters who may not have made her their first choice who would, nevertheless, be prepared to support her in a second round.
Returning to the issue of the media, Flores was asked about the recent cancellation of César Hildebrandt’s television show on Frecuencia Latina. Flores regretted Hildebrandt’s departure from the television, and reinforced what Hildebrandt himself has said: she needs no protection from the media and welcomes independent journalism.
Flores is clearly someone who enjoys discussing policy issues. She joked that any manual on political strategy would say that the front-runner should never convene a debate with the other candidates, but she said she has no problem with the confrontation of ideas in a format that is appropriate, and no difficulty facing a critical audience.
Flores is a strong debater and a policy wonk. She talked in depth about the problems in the mining sector, coca production, education reform, Chilean investment in Peruvian ports, policies to promote foreign direct investment, subsidies in agriculture, and Peru’s role in the international community. Her answers were impressive not only for the familiarity with the substance of the issues, but also for the logic of exposition. Her style tends to be to start with generalities, followed by a discussion of specifics, and to ensure in the process that the essence of the question is acknowledged. That alone is not necessarily extraordinary, but to do this for nearly two hours without making the slightest gaffe or political misstep, all the while speaking without notes and with complete clarity, is the mark of an impressive candidate.
If the Flores campaign has been impressive so far, its main vulnerability is the flip-side of its greatest strength: that is, the reliance on the appeal of the candidate. The strong emphasis on the candidate and her merits, and the reliance on close personal contact with voters as a means of cultivating an image of care and concern for ordinary people, could backfire. There are no solid organized linkages between voters and the political machinery behind the candidate. Support for Flores may be fickle. A lot will depend on her performance in the campaign—and in any future debate. Voters know they are not getting only Flores. They are also getting two vice presidential candidates, 120 candidates to congress, and a huge entourage that does not necessarily have her sensibility or appeal. The closer she gets to power, the more voters are going to start to look at the people around the candidate. The electorate will be turned off very quickly if political hacks around the candidate start acting like they can take power for granted (and begin to speculate about who gets to be prime minister, minister of this or that, and so forth). The recent debate over some of the less desirable names on the list of UN congressional candidates–what in local slang are called the “anticuchos”–is potentially the sort of discussion that could be most harmful.
A final note. According to La Republica (see below), Flores was harrassed by Humala supporters when she later attempted to visit with voters in Ate along the Carretera Central in Lima. The goal would seem to be to interrupt the “up-close and hyper-personal” relationship that Flores seeks to establish with voters.

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There is a new blog about Peruvian politics and media. It has been created by three Peruvian journalists and researchers. Jacqueline Fowks also teaches journalism at the Catholic University. Here is her analysis of the cancellation of Hildebrandt’s show. Maybe we should get Hildebrandt started on a blog!

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Maxwell A. Cameron (*)
February 8, 2006
Las graves denuncias contra Ollanta Humala pueden perjudicarlo como una opción para sectores del electorado que estarían contemplando apoyarlo para patear el tablero político. Sin embargo, el fenómeno de los candidatos ‘outsider’ merece análisis por que es, en parte, un efecto previsible del sistema presidencialista.
El presidencialismo es un sistema de elección directa del presidente por un plazo predeterminado que, bajo ciertas condiciones, puede generar líderes plebiscitarios que gobiernan al margen de la constitución y la ley. La irrupción de ‘outsiders’ en campañas electorales difícilmente ocurre en sistemas parlamentarios donde hay que ser elegido legislador para luego ser seleccionado por colegas a ocupar el puesto de primer ministro.
Muchos analistas definen el presidencialismo como sinónimo de la separación de poderes. No es así. Es más, el sistema presidencialista esta sujeto a la tentación continua de vulnerar esta separación.
Bajo el presidencialismo, el presidente –el Poder Ejecutivo– siendo elegido por el pueblo, tiende a asumir la función de gran legislador, mientras que el Congreso –el Poder Legislativo– deja de legislar y se dedica a juzgar causas (como, por ejemplo, decidir quién puede ser congresista o candidato a la Presidencia). El Poder Judicial, corrompido por dentro por facciones, termina siendo el premio gordo para quien lo pueda controlar, porque un poder judicial neutralizado políticamente no puede investigar casos de corrupción.
Existen varios indicios de que esta campaña electoral resultará en una legislatura más débil y un Poder Judicial más politizado:
Se han presentado tachas contra candidatos con la clara intención de utilizar abusivamente el Poder Judicial. Hay candidatos que buscan una curul con el propósito de conseguir la inmunidad parlamentaria. Si esta estrategia abusiva es exitosa resultara en un Congreso aún más desprestigiado.
A pesar de que el Poder Judicial no debe ser involucrado en la campaña, algunos candidatos amenazan con empezar sendas investigaciones contra sus adversarios tan pronto como lleguen al poder.
El tema de la no reelección parlamentaria, por más que sea debido al ‘clamor ciudadano’, va en contra de la idea de elecciones democráticas internas y podría conducir a un Congreso aún más débil.
Probablemente ningún Gobierno que resulte de este proceso electoral tendrá una mayoría en el Congreso y habrá necesidad de hacer coaliciones. Por eso, es preocupante escuchar a candidatos hablando de la posibilidad de cerrar el nuevo Congreso cuando recién está despegando el proceso electoral.
Es obvio que habría que mirar más allá del análisis institucional y del presidencialismo para ofrecer una explicación completa de la irrupción de los ‘outsiders’. La exclusión social explicaría el por qué, a pesar de que los indicadores macroeconómicos van muy bien, la población no percibe una mejoría. La informalidad explicaría cómo grandes segmentos de la población están fuera de los circuitos de comunicación y regulación estatal, y por consecuencia, no optan por candidatos que forman parte del país formal. La desigualdad y la heterogeneidad social también explicarían el atractivo por un candidato que reconoce lo nacional y popular. Además, un sistema presidencial puede funcionar perfectamente bien donde existe un Estado de derecho capaz de controlar la corrupción y abuso de poder: Costa Rica y Chile ofrecen ejemplos. Por esa razón es alentador que combatir la corrupción sea un tema central de la campaña.
Lamentablemente, los candidatos hasta ahora no han dado señales de una voluntad de hacer reformas. Los entornos cercanos de los candidatos más fuertes evocan amargos recuerdos de hechos pasados, como las visitas al SIN de representantes de los grupos económicos y financieros, de abusos de derechos humanos, como la masacre de El Frontón, y de la sumisa administración de justicia en el Ministerio Publico durante la época de Fujimori.
Para mejorar el funcionamiento del sistema político no se necesita abandonar el presidencialismo ni cambiar la Constitución. Una reforma judicial de fondo combinada con políticas sociales dedicadas a fortalecer el ejercicio de los derechos ciudadanos contribuiría a un marco institucional más estable y equitativo, de tal manera que los ‘outsiders’, y su estilo antisistema, no sean necesarios para que se escuche el clamor ciudadano.
(*) Artículo publicado por el diario El Comercio, sección Opinión, 8 de febrero del 2006

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Maxwell A. Cameron
February 7, 2006
César Hildebrandt did not resign from his television program, “Hoy Con Hildebrandt.” Alberto Cabello, the general manager of Frecuencia Latina, unexpectedly canceled the program. According to Hildebrandt, Cabello cited “incompatibility” between Hildebrandt’s program and the television station.
The incompatibility may stem from political bias. Much of the Peruvian media supports the candidacy of Lourdes Flores Nano, the leader of National Unity. “There is a perfect marriage between economic power and the press,” Hildebrandt stated in an interview with Magaly Medina on the television program “Magaly Te Ve.”
The Peruvian media have given extensive and sometimes uncritical coverage to Flores’ party, while the coverage of Ollanta Humala has been almost uniformly hostile. Hildebrandt has been an exception. He interviewed Humala recently and was tough in some of his questioning, but wound up the interview on a friendly note. Hildebrandt also gave air time to other spokespersons from the Humala camp and at one point stated publicly that he would not be part of a campaign orchestrated by the Banco de Credito to support Flores.
In an interview today on RPP, Hildebrandt indicated that he believes his interview with Humala was a factor in the decision to cancel his show.
One of Hildebrandt’s reporters, Nancy Morán, recently traveled to Madre Mía, in Huánuco. She found evidence that a recent report by Panorama on Humala was based on distortions and the manipulation of witnesses. Her report was not aired, and the video cassettes were removed from the television station by Hildebrandt himself. Hildebrandt rejected the claim, made by Humala spokesperson Daniel Abugattás, that he had evidence that National Unity had bought witnesses to implicate Humala in human rights abuses.
Hildebrandt makes the point that the media does no favor to Flores by manipulating information to make Humala out to look worse than he is. If he has committed serious human rights abuses, then independent journalism is needed to investigate and get to the bottom of the matter. Reporters like Cecilia Valenzuela and Rosa Maria Palacios, in their respective television programs, have recently had to bend over backwards to show that the allegations against Humala stand-up without the Panorama report.
The cancellation of Hildebrandt’s television program raises serious doubts about the credibility of journalism in Peru today. These doubts make it easy for false accusations to proliferate, leaving television viewers and newspaper readers confused as to what they can believe and what they cannot. The result is deeper and deeper cynicism about politics, the media, and the role of economic interests behind the scenes.

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By Maxwell A. Cameron, FOCALPOINT, January-February 2006, Volume 5, Number 1, pp. 1-2.
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Jorge Bazo E.
Translated and edited by Maxwell A. Cameron
6 February 2006
Versión en Español abajo
Ollanta Humala Tasso has had a tough weekend. The candidate for the presidency of the Unión por el Perú has suffered a series of accusations, threats of impending criminal investigations, problems within his political group, and allegations that one of his vice presidential candidates has a history of sexual harassment. Most damaging, however, are allegations of human rights abuses dating to Humala’s service in the counter-insurgency war in 1992. Humala denounces these allegations as part of a smear campaign by parties and the media, but they are beginning to look credible.
For the past two weeks, people in the area of Madre Mía in Alto Huallaga have denounced one “Captain Carlos” who they say committed violations of human rights in 1992. Humala has been identified as the captain in question, but this has not yet been confirmed by the Ministry of Defense.
There were at least three military commanders known by the nom de guerre “Capitán Carlos” in Alto Huallaga. The newspaper La República cites a confidential document that shows that Ollanta Humala was ‘Capitán Carlos Gonzales’, chief of the counter-insurgency base in Madre Mía en 1992. This was a time of intense fighting between the armed forces and the Shining Path, when many human rights violations occurred. It was also a time of well-documented links between the military intelligence and drug trafficking groups.
The denunciations against Humala were reinforced with new accusations this weekend. In one case a merchant, Zonia Luis Cristóbal, accused Humala of humiliating mistreatment of her family, the looting of her shop by troops at his command. Another accusation came from Teresa Ávila, sister-in-law of Benigno Sullca Castro and sister of Natividad Ávila Rivera, who were detained, tortured, and killed by soldiers in the Madre Mía base in June 1992.
In making sense of these grave allegations, it will be vitally important to distinguish legitimate accusations from media manipulation. A program on Channel 13 called “La Hora de Tingo” aired testimony by the local population from Madre Mía who were interviewed by ‘Panorama’, and they said that they had denounced various crimes and abuses but at no point did they indicate Humala as the author of these crimes, and that their words had been manipulated with the intention of damaging the candidate.
Respected human rights advocates are taking the allegations against Humala very seriously. Sofia Macher, from the Instituto de Defensa Legal (IDL), and a secretary of the Coordinadora Nacional de Derechos Humanos, Alejandro Silva, announced yesterday night on the television program “La Ventana Indiscreta” that this week they would be bringing before a judge evidence that Ollanta Humala was involved in 5 separate cases of disappearances and three more of torture.
In Trujillo, Ollanta Humala refused to respond directly to these accusations. He has neither confirmed nor defnied that he was captain Carlos, saying this is information for the Ministry of Defense to divulge. As Macher points out, it is odd to see a so-called “outsider” candidate hiding behind a powerful government ministry.
Humala has demanded proof be presented against him, and alleges that all the accusations are part of a dirty electoral campaign. He has committed himself to collaborating with any investigation that might be undertaken by the Public Ministry.
Humala has other problem. His cousin Liliana Humala has turned against him, as have other rank-and-file groups. In an attempt to restore order in his group, Humala asked all candidates to place themselves at the disposition of the leadership. Last night, Jorge Doménech, president of the electoral committee of the party, announced that the national leadership had decided to ratify Carlos Torres Caro as vice presidential candidate.
Meanwhile, strange events are occurring within the television station Frecuencia Latina. Last week Cesar Hildebrandt resigned his popular show “Hoy con Hildebrandt”, which has been replaced with (get this) the X Files. It is not known why Hildebrandt resigned, but he was vocal about refusing to engage in a dog-pile on Humala or to allow his program to be part of Lourdes Flores Nano election campaign (an accusation made against some of his competitors). Daniel Abugattas, leader of the Nationalist Party claims leaders of Unidad Nacional bought witnesses to accuse Humala of human rights abuses. He further accused majority shareholder Baruch Ivcher and producer Gilberto Hume of retaining video evidence to support this. Ivcher denies the allegation and has threatened Abugattas with a law suit. The journalistic director of Panamericana Televisión, Alejandro Guerrero, also called the allegation unfounded.

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Maxwell A. Cameron
February 3, 2006

Photo: M.A. Cameron
Susana Villarán, presidential candidate for Concertación Descentralista, participated in a symbolic flag-washing ceremony to express opposition to a new law of military justice, Law No. 28665. The law, which was promulgated last month, creates a parallel system of military justice along side the civil judiciary. The ceremony was held shortly after noon in front of the National Magistrates Council in the 35 hundred block of the Paseo de la República in San Isidro.

Photo: M.A. Cameron
A group of supporters were on hand with buckets of soap, water, and flags. Among those present were congressional candidates Fabricio Orozco, Roberto Sánchez, Manuel Dammert, Oscar Badillo, and José Carlos Vera. When Villarán arrived, the crowd chanted slogans like “Susana is decent, Susana is brave” or “Susana, for sure, be tough with the mafia” (Susana, segura, a la mafia dale dura).

Photo: M.A. Cameron
I asked one of Villarán’s supporters why the law had been passed, and why now? He said the law was introduced and passed in the legislature at this time because, for the first time ever, the members of the armed forces and the police can vote. Political parties like the American Popular Revolutionary Alliance (APRA), National Unity (UN) and the Independent Moralizing Front (FIM) all voted in favor of this law in order to curry favor with the military voters. The bill, sponsored by Luis Iberico of the FIM, was passed into law very quickly, and with little debate, in December of last year. Arguing that it opens the way to more impunity, and goes against the work of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, the spokesperson for Concertación Decentralista said the law constitutes a “golpe de estado” (or coup) against the judicial branch of government.

Photo: M.A. Cameron
The purpose of the flag washing was to bring pressure to bear upon the National Magistrates Council to refuse to name justices to the military courts until a constitutional challenge to the law of military justice is heard in the Constitutional Tribunal, Peru’s equivalent of a supreme court for constitutional matters. The nation’s top lawyer, or Fiscal de la Nación (often translated inaccurately as Attorney General, but in fact the office of Fiscal de la Nación is fully autonomous and responsible for upholding the rule of law in the agencies of government), Adelaida Bolívar has challenged the constitutionality of the law.

Photo: M.A. Cameron
After washing the flag, Villarán held a media scrum in which she praised Bolívar as a brave supporter of democracy, and denounced the law of military justice, saying it was approved “between the rooster and midnight.” She said that symbolically washing the flag evokes the “healthiest tradition of the defense of democracy.” In 2000, at the end of the Fujimori regime, flag-washing ceremonies were held in front of the palace of government. The event today was meant as a reminder of the dark days of that period. Villarán asked what kind of democracy Peruvians want.

Photo: M.A. Cameron
A flier was circulated that called for the defense of the rule of law, democracy and the institutionality of the armed forces. The key points in the flier were:
– The law of military justice is a violation of the rule of law because it creates a system of justice parallel to the judiciary and public ministry.
– It creates a new layer of bureaucracy, with 176 new judges who are active duty military officers and hence subject to hierarchy, discipline, and obedience to superiors.
– It creates a competition over competence in the area of human rights law.
– It opens the door to a militaristic regime and weakens civil liberties.
– All presidential candidates should state their position with respect to this law.
– No justices should be appointed until the constitutionality of the law is resolved.
– Laws, like the recently proposed amnesty, that weaken the rule of law hurt the military and the nation alike.
– The armed forces should be modernized and professionalized.
How likely is military justice to emerge as a campaign issue? Leaving aside members of the armed forces, who have an obvious interest in the topic, most Peruvians are unlikely to care a good deal. The parties that support this law are the front-runners in the campaign, while Concertación Descentralista is in the single digits in opinion polls. One of Villarán’s supporters acknowledged that many Peruvians are more concerned about getting bread and butter on the table than they are with arcane issues of military justice, but he argued that it is important to get the issue on the agenda of other candidates and make this one of the issues voters think about when going to the polls.
Military courts were key pillars of the militaristic political regime created by former President Alberto Fujimori. These courts lacked the most rudimentary elements of due process, often refusing to accept writs of habeas corpus issued by civilian judges. They also claimed jurisdiction over civilians, and treated former military officers in retirement as if they were still part of the chain of command. Many of the judges who are now being considered for appointment to the military courts were defenders of Montesinos, Fujimori’s corrupt intelligence chief. Some signed letters of subjection to Montesinos, or were involved in the cover-up of Montesinos’ role in the Cantuta massacre of 1992. One ordered the capture of General Rodolfo Robles after he blew the whistle on human rights abuses by the high command.

Photo: M.A. Cameron

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Maxwell A. Cameron
January 29, 2006

Photo: M.A. Cameron
On Saturday, January 28, Valentín Paniagua visited three popular markets in the district of San Martín de Porres. San Martín de Porres is one of the older working class districts of Lima. A notice in La Republica had announced that the candidate for the Frente de Centro, who served as interim president of Peru in 2000-2001, would be lunching in a popular kitchen on the 13 hundred block of Avenida Perú. We arrived a little early and had the chance to speak with local party organizers. As we congregated at one of the market entrances, we were approached by Oscar Benavides, former president of the National Association of District Mayors of Peru, and the number 4 candidate on the list of aspirants to congress for the Frente de Centro. Benavides emphasized that the campaign has just begun, and he expressed optimism in spite of recent polls placing Paniagua in a distant 4th place position with only 7 percent of the popular vote. The Frente de Centro does not buy polls, offered Benavides in explanation.

Organizers pass out leaflets
Photo: M. A. Cameron
A yellow station-wagon announced over a megaphone that Paniagua would shortly arrive, calling him a candidate of “proven integrity.” When he did arrive, Paniagua was in the accompany of congressional candidate Carlos Valenzuela (numbers 11 on the Frente de Centro list), and was greeted enthusiastically with cheers of “Valentín Presidente!” Others muttered less scripted comments under their breath about how short he was, or how bald. Paniagua moved energetically through the market, seeming to take great pleasure shaking hands and stopping to talk. At one point a market woman—who earlier had told us we were at the right place when we asked whether Paniagua was coming through—offered him flowers. Because the campaign was running behind time, Paniagua did not stop to have lunch but got back in his car, a modest black Mazda, and headed off for Ate-Vitarte. After he left we spoke briefly with Meche Mendoza, also candidate for congress (number 17 on the list) on Paniagua’s slate.

Paniagua receives flowers
Photo: M. A. Cameron
The visit to the popular kitchen was not unlike the walk through Independencia with Lourdes Flores, which we described last weekend. In both cases, the candidates attempted to meet voters face-to-face. Flores had a larger entourage (she had a bus to bring in her supporters), and there was much more of a media and police presence as befits the front-runner. Indeed, there was no media presence that we could observe during Paniagua’s brief stop. There was, however, more evidence of local organization. Benavides, for example, is from Somos Peru, which undoubtedly provides an important organizational base for the Frente de Centro. The offer of flowers to the candidates, obviously not a spontaneous gesture, provided some indication of a link to the folk in the marketplace. In addition to the congressional candidates, there were other grassroots organizers around, most of whom did not look quite as uncomfortable or out of place as the middle class university students who accompanied Flores.

Meche Mendoza holds up her banner
Photo: M. A. Cameron
The contrasts and comparisons between the Flores and Paniagua campaigns help highlight the similarities and differences between the two major parties behind the respective leaders—the Popular Christian Party (PPC) and Popular Action (AP). These two parties are often seen as very similar, and indeed they have governed together. Historically, the PPC has a clear right-of-center orientation and strong links to business, while AP has never seen itself as a right-wing party and does not consider itself to be a political vehicle of the entrepreneurial elite.
To be sure, Flores offers a more moderate face than the traditional image of the PPC. Her conservatism reflects an awareness that neoliberal policies failed to create shared prosperity and, therefore, the state must assume a more vigorous social policy role to in the fight against poverty. As a result, the differences between her and Paniagua seem relatively small and this has encouraged some strategists to argue that Paniagua should have joined the National Unity slate with Flores. In an interview earlier this week, Cesar Hildebrandt suggested that a vote for Paniagua might be a “wasted vote” since the main contest would seem to be Flores vs. Humala. Paniagua insisted that he represents a distinct option and continues to have a viable candidacy: “I have the fibre to fight,” he said. Hildebrandt congratulated Paniagua for finally saying something purely electoral.
Whether Paniagua’s candidacy can catch fire with the voters is doubtful if the polls are to be believed. But since the polls are imperfect, it never hurts to talk with people in the streets. After Paniagua left the market in San Martín de Porres, we hung around for a while talking to the vendors. We heard three contrasting views. The first was enthusiastically supportive. Paniagua is a man of experience and honesty, said one. “He could be the hope.” Another launched into a very articulate and angry diatribe against politicians in general and insisted that the only way for people like her to get ahead was through hard work rather than depositing hope in politicians. “Looks at where you are,” she said, “and look at me.” The difference, she said, was “money, power, and color.” (Ouch! Field work can hurt). A third market woman said Peru needs a strong leader, “someone with balls,” she said, with apologies for the strong words. We were better off under Fujimori than Toledo. I was left with the impression that Paniagua’s visit was welcomed, and that he was greeted respectfully, but that this does not necessarily translate into votes.
While the Paniagua campaign struggles to ignite enthusiasm among the voters, there are other people working behind the scenes to stop the candidate in his tracks. Yesterday, most of the papers carried a story about an allegation by Jorge del Castillo of the American Popular Revolutionary Alliance (APRA). He claimed that a major financial entity (he did not explicitly say the Romero group, but who else would it be?) had offered money to Jaime Salinas, a small candidate with less that 2 percent support in the polls, to retire his candidacy in order to help Flores. According to Del Castillo, who offered no evidence except an unnamed “credible source,” Flores had met with Salinas to discuss this, and Salinas was preparing to announce his withdrawal from the race imminently, in time to switch his candidacy to the congress. The Flores camp immediately rejected Del Castillo’s allegations and threatened to drag him before the electoral authorities.
Today, however, Víctor Andrés García Belaúnde, the president of Popular Action, said that something similar had happened to him and that he was not surprised to hear that certain members of the business community might be looking for ways of eliminating some of the smaller campaigns. He claimed to have been invited to lunch by a group of business people “close to Arturo Woodman and the Romero group.” He accepted the invitation “to see if I could get something, proposing the ideas of Valentín Paniagua, and everything turned out the other way around: it was they who wanted to convince Paniagua to pull out of the election race.” The argument was that the race between Flores and Humala was close, and this was a threat to democracy. García Belaúnde said he told them the idea was absurd and stupid, and he did not even mention it to Paniagua. For his part, Paniagua rejected the idea with the joke: “I am not good merchandise.”

Photo: M.A. Cameron

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Fabiola Bazo
January 26, 2006
The Peruvian Central Bank (Banco Central de Reserva, BCR) and members of its board have been in the eye of a storm this last week. The BCR has intervened aggressively in the currency exchange market to reduce volatility. The BCR sold dollar reserves in what some analysts have called a preventive measure to stop “a sudden attack to the nuevo sol.” On January 12, Kurt Burneo, President of the National Bank and member of the Board of the BCR, argued that banks and Pension funds (AFPs) were speculating to generate fear among the general public. As a response, the BCR bought nuevos soles to avoid a currency collapse. The scale of the intervention was unprecedented.
On January 17, critics of the BCR –including the Instituto Peruano de Economía (IPE), business groups, pension funds, and banks– answered back stating that the central bank was using volatility as an excuse to intervene, generating an artificially peaceful environment for investors, when the nominal policy of the central bank is to let the currency float. Aggressive intervention by the BCR, acording to critics, indirectly benefits presidential hopeful Ollanta Humala. In this view, the BCR should have let the Peruvian currency fall, thereby demonstrating the potentially negative impact on the economy if Ollanta Humala is elected. Burneo has stated the BCR will take legal action against those who have criticized the measures taken by the central bank to maintain economic stability and reduce the electoral noise.
What is striking about this episode is the lobbying by a range of economic agents seeking to influence monetary policy and politicize the decisions of the central bank.

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Maxwell A. Cameron
January 24, 2006
Martha Chávez, presidential candidate for Alianza por el Futuro, met this morning with the Association of the Foreign Press in Peru (Asociación de Prensa Extranjera en el Perú). Following a brief exposition, she held a conversation with about a dozen journalists in which she spoke about her candidacy, the role of Alberto Fujimori in the campaign, and the challenges facing any future government she might lead.

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For a good analysis and more background information on Ollanta Humala, see http://wolfylima.blogspot.com/ and scroll down to January 18, Ollanta Humala – The Big Unknown.

Maxwell A. Cameron
January 21, 2006

A note in La República provided advance notice of a walk with Lourdes Flores through the working class district of Independencia, in the northern cone of Lima. We grabbed a cab and arrived at the meeting place a few minutes before the walk was to begin at 2:45 pm. At first, we could see no sign of any campaign activity as we strolled along Avenida Tupac Amaru until, at last, we spotted a couple of late model SUVs—the shiniest cars on the street. They proved to be the advance crew.
We loitered for a while, chatting with journalists and members of Flores’ entourage while waiting for the presidential candidate. Finally, a campaign bus arrived carrying a group of supporters, followed by a large silver SUV. We formed a caravan and headed toward the hills, arriving at the end of a paved street in the neighborhood Tupac Amaru Payet. Flores emerged from her car and was immediately surrounded by enthusiastic supporters, including congressional candidates Lourdes Alcorta, Pepe Kleinberg, and Gaby Pérez del Solar.

Photo: M.A. Cameron
Someone offered a glass of chicha, which Flores accepted with pleasure. From the sidelines, a couple of women from the barrio called for Flores to speak. One shouted “Lourdes, don’t forget the poor.” But the candidate did not stop to speak at that point. The plan was to move on foot along dirt paths carved by usage around a hillside densely covered by ramshackle and precarious houses, some made of matt, some wood, and the more solid ones of brick. Some of Flores’ entourage were unimpressed. One referred pejoratively to the neighborhood as “un asiento bien telaraña” (in local slang, a very poor settlement).

Photo: M.A. Cameron
As the entourage moved through the neighborhood, the crowd swelled. Some were curious, others genuinely supportive. One onlooker said she supported the candidate of Unión Nacional because she is a woman. Why was that important? “Women think better than men” she said, they take care of the household economy. “Men work hard, but they don’t distribute.” Another bystander expressed similar views. “A woman should have the opportunity,” she said. “There have been so many men elected and they have done nothing. Women are more intuitive in many ways.” She particularly liked Flores because of her honesty. An elderly woman approached us to say she hoped Flores would improve education, particularly civic education and vocational training.

Photo: M.A. Cameron
When we emerged from the narrow dirt paths of the barrio back onto paved streets, Flores stopped to speak with the press. The crowd was hushed as the candidate took questions from the media. At one point a water balloon was tossed into the crowd, either by someone seeking to make a point or just for amusement.

Photo: M.A. Cameron
What is Missing in this Picture?
Lourdes Flores, unlike Valentin Paniagua, gives the impression of wanting the presidency. She has a reputation for being a good listener, and her public statements are coherent and intelligent. Moreover, we were able to observe enough spontaneous expressions of support from onlookers to believe that her support base outside the affluent districts of Lima is real, especially among women. Consistent with her low negative ratings, we saw no clear expressions of hostility from the people in Tupac Amaru Payet.
Yet Flores and her supporters looked more than a little out of place in this working class, mestizo, barrio. One member of Flores’ entourage said she emerged from a similar walk so covered in dust that she had to take off her clothes in her garden before entering her house.
How deep is the connection between Flores and her potential supporters? The candidate was not met by local organizing committees or leaders, nor given a stage on which to speak directly to the local folk. If there were local organizing committees, or grassroots leaders involved, they were given no prominence. In the absence of such connections with the community, Tupac Amaru Payet seemed to serve as a stage for a public appearance designed to reinforce Flores’ image in the media as someone concerned with the plight of the poor. The inauthenticity of the event was made all the more dramatic by the contrast between the white, middle class supporters of UN, who were bused into the barrio, and the poor, cholo inhabitants of Tupac Amaru Payet who seemed not to be linked to the candidate in an organized way.

Photo: M.A. Cameron