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Those who believe that only fair and clean elections can drive Latin American countries into sustained progress towards democracy were elated to see that, soon after a first round of the presidential election in Peru that left much to be desired on both counts, the United States warned president Alberto Fujimori, who was running for a unprecedented third-term, that there could be serious consequences for U.S.-Peru relations if the runup to the second round and the election itself to be held May 28 turned out to lack the desired fairness and transparency.
The U.S. was backed up by similar evaluations of the election by a mission from the Organization of American States and by other foreign observers. But not much changed in President Fujimori’s heavy-handed actions to manipulate the electoral process—even though many analysts believed he had a good chance of winning a fair election. After his opponent, Alejandro Toledo, dropped out of the race alleging that the conditions for a fair election had not been established, Fujimori refused all U.S. entreaties that he postpone the second round and went ahead to win it with 51 percent of the vote.
There was no precedent for this kind of U.S. warning on an oncoming election to the democratically elected government of a major Latin American country. Many observers both here and in Latin America felt that, for once, the U.S. was decisively on the side of the angels and that it would gain support for sanctioning Peru from governments in Latin America elected in free and fair elections. Maybe angels could have pulled this off by themselves, but it soon became clear that the Clinton administration had not done in advance the required diplomatic homework with key Latin American nations to seek a minimum common ground, without which mere mortals were bound to fail in this endeavor.
Last week the U.S. sought to “promote a vigorous response” to events in Peru from the 35-nation Organization of American States, of which it is a member. But the U.S. proposal to invoke Resolution 1080, applied when democracy has been interrupted, did not win a consensus and was withdrawn in favor of Article 61, which says foreign ministers should meet “to consider problems of an urgent nature.” They are meeting this week in Windsor, Ontario, but only perfunctory measures can come out of this meeting because they were effectively preempted by public statement from their own nations’ governments.
Mexico had already summed up regional sentiment last week at the OAS, saying: “It is up to Peruvians to resolve the question of election results.” Brazil, Latin America’s biggest country and its economic giant, went further, declaring Fujimori’s third-term victory legitimate and opposing calls for punitive action, saying it could destabilize Peru.
Meanwhile, after discussing the issue with his counterparts, Chile’s Ricardo Lagos and Argentina’s Fernando de la Rua, Brazil’s President Fernando Henrique Cardoso said in Berlin, where they were for a meeting of the center-left Socialist International: “The presidents were agreed that there was an election, that a president was elected. It wasn't a coup. It was an election. The people of Peru took the decision.”
This should not have come as a surprise for the Clinton administration. Absent a thorough diplomatic effort to develop a common denominator with the major Latin American countries, they began to wonder what was behind this unusual push against Peru’s Fujimori, when respected polling forecasters said he would have won the election outright, as voters—especially the poor majority—looked to the leader who since 1990 has quashed leftist rebels and runaway inflation, bringing peace and stability to Peru’s 25 million people.
In the end, analysts are somewhat baffled as to why the United States has singled out Peru—a crucial U.S. ally in its war against cocaine trafficking—for election fraud, especially when compared to its No. 2 trading partner, Mexico. Mexico’s Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), the world’s longest ruling regime, has faced charges of election fraud for ages, as it does now ahead of its July 2 vote, but has never seen a sanction threat from the United States.
Filling the vacuum left by American diplomacy as to why the Clinton administration had chosen to make such a major issue of Peru’s election, some observers looked for a lobbying effort in Washington that might explain this—and they have come up with a theory that revolves around Elliott Abrams, former assistant secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs in the Reagan administration.
It is in the public record that Abrams is an adviser to Baruch Ivcher, the wealthy Peru TV station owner whose citizenship was canceled and whose station was seized in 1997 by the Fujimori government. Beyond that, Latin American sources say Abrams is behind the effort to influence the thinking of the Clinton administration on Peru, offering no proof other than op-ed pieces that appeared in major U.S. newspapers in which Abrams wrote: “Either Fujimori will be stopped and a free and fair second round of elections held in Peru or we will have approved a new model for Latin autocracy.” From there the scenario that has developed in Latin American circles is that Ivcher is financing Toledo’s campaign with the help of American businessmen.
This may not be true, but the fact that this scenario is making the rounds among Latin American diplomats in Washington shows how serious is the gap in communications between them and the Clinton administration.
Claudio Campuzano (claudio-campuzano@hotmail.com) is U.S, correspondent for the Latin American newsweekly Tiempos del Mundo and editorial page editor of the New York daily Noticias del Mundo. He writes weekly for World Tribune.com