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A funny thing happened to Peruvians on the way to getting rid of populist president Alberto Fujimori who, even allowing for any monkey business in the April-May elections, can be safely said to have had the support of close to 50 percent of the voters: they ended up with a president from the most conservative party that in those same elections got all of 1.3 percent of the national vote.
To be sure, Valentin Paniagua, who got his new job when Fujimori resigned by mail from the safe distance of Tokyo, is supposed to be an interim president, heading a caretaker government—unaccountably, he is keeping his day job as president of the national Congress—but from now until next April, when elections are scheduled to choose a new president who would be installed in July, he may do a lot from the presidential palace to improve the chances of a revival of his party, Accion Popular.
Fernando Belaunde, Accion Popular’s leader, was elected president in June 1963 but was ousted by a military coup in October 1968. Elected again in 1980, during the next five years per capita income declined, the foreign debt rose, and violence by leftist guerrillas and government counterinsurgency forces mounted. In the 1985 presidential elections, voters chose Alan Garcia, the candidate of APRA (American Popular Revolutionary Alliance), a radical leftist party founded in 1924, but Garcia failed to stem the country’s rapid economic decline. Enter Fujimori in 1990, politically populist but economically conservative, who imposed an austerity program to deal with hyperinflation and to restore Peru's ability to borrow money internationally, while he succeeded in repressing leftist guerrilla violence. On October 31, 1993, Peruvians voted to accept a new constitution, signed by Fujimori on December 29, that increased presidential power, changed the legislature from a bicameral body to a unicameral one, and allowed Fujimori to run for a second term, which he won. But he was undone by his maneuvering to run for a third term that was deemed unconstitutional and the fraud he put in motion to win it. And a scandal involving his intelligence chief and political ally Vladimiro Montesinos made Fujimori’s situation so untenable that last September he announce he would be resigning and calling new elections. Eventually, things got so hot for this past master of political machinations that he took off for Japan and plans to stay there for the foreseeable future.
Brief though his tenure may be, interim president Paniagua faces the daunting challenge of restoring a semblance of economic stability and, most important, guaranteeing clean elections next April. This will mean continuing the time-consuming task of rebuilding Peru’s democratic institutions and ensuring the military, the traditional power broker in Peruvian politics, does not interfere in the vote this time. Meanwhile, he is building up public confidence by signaling he means business by firing a dozen military chiefs in an attempt to purge the armed forces of the influence of Montesinos. Economy minister Javier Silva’s announcement that he had to reshuffle Peru's $19 billion of debts because the country lacked the cash to service them next year showed a willingness to face the problems ahead.
Paniagua’s government, spearheaded by Javier Perez de Cuellar, former United Nations secretary general and an Accion Popular leader, will oversee a potentially rancorous and volatile election campaign, set to be fought by as many as 15 presidential hopefuls from across the political spectrum. While former presidential candidate Alejandro Toledo and internationally respected ombudsman Jorge Santistevan are the only declared runners, many more are expected to emerge before the January 8 deadline. Toledo’s hope that he could run as a single unity candidate seems increasingly remote. In this political stew, with lots of mostly irresponsible and generally unknown candidates claiming attention, it is not unthinkable that Accion Popular might trot out its grand old leader, eighty-five-year-old Belaunde.
Younger Peruvians, who have no memories of his failed presidencies, know him as a distinguished elder statesman, and even those who may remember the times he was in power could still see him as a serene personality that might be a desired contrast to the antics of Fujimori and who might lead Peru through a healing process it sorely needs after months of crisis and scandal.
The superminority situation of Accion Popular may not be a problem. At this time, in Peru parties remain little more than groupings for potential caudillos, or strongmen. The next elections are likely to be fought mainly on personalities, not policies.
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