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In 1992, an automatic pistol in each hand, Alan Garcia, who had been for five years Peru's president, shot 18 rounds into the air as an army tank was about to knock down one of the walls of his house in Lima, the country's capital. This stopped the attackers long enough to give him time to escape and seek asylum in neighboring Colombia.
It wasn't a coup he was running away from, though. He had completed his five years as elected president two years earlier, heading a leftist administration, widely seen as inept and corrupt, that had sunk Peru's economy. From 1985 to 1990 per capita income declined, hyperinflation soared, the foreign debt rose and violence by leftist guerrillas mounted.
In 1990, Peru's voters chose as president dark-horse Alberto Fujimori, but it was only in 1992 that Garcia was hit with two separate charges that he had pocketed bribes-in one case, an alleged $1 million-while in office. He was never tried, but he was ordered seized by Fujimori, who at that time had suspended the Constitution, closed Congress and the courts and temporarily seized dictatorial powers.
Now it's Fujimori who found it necessary to go into exile, while Garcia is coming back to Peru to run for president.
Last September, Fujimori's maneuvering to run for a third term that was deemed unconstitutional and the fraud he put in motion to win it, as well as a scandal involving his intelligence chief and political ally Vladimiro Montesinos, made his situation so untenable that he announced he would be resigning and called for new congressional and presidential elections in April.
But two months later things got so hot for this past master of political machinations that he took off for Japan, mailed in his resignation from Tokyo and plans to stay there for the foreseeable future, as a transitional government set up by Congress and headed by president Valentin Paniagua's is pushing an anti-corruption drive and several courts and congressional commissions are probing Fujimori's possible involvement in charges against fugitive Montesinos. that go from money laundering to running death squads.
Meanwhile, Peru's Supreme Court has thrown out corruption charges against Garcia, declaring one inadmissible because of a statute of limitations and dropping the other because, according to the court, he had previously been absolved of the accusation.
The warrants for his arrest lifted, Garcia is returning to Peru January 27 to kick off a campaign for the presidency as the candidate of APRA (American Popular Revolutionary Alliance), the 77-year-old radical leftist party which he led in 1985, seeking to bury memories of the rash populist who came to power at the age of 35 and nearly bankrupted the country.
Garcia's legal situation is still unclear, and lawyers said he could face arrest on his arrival on lesser charges of illegally possessing a gun when he was last in Peru, but polls for the presidential elections scheduled for April 8 already show Garcia in fourth place, with 8 percent of the vote, behind front runner Alejandro Toledo, a free-market advocate with leftist rhetoric who was Fujimori's main rival in last year's elections, with 34 percent; 10 percent support for Fernando Olivera, a legislator whose video of ex-spy chief Montesinos allegedly bribing a member of Congress ultimately toppled Fujimori, and 9 percent for right-of center Lourdes Flores.
With nearly a dozen more candidates running for president, chances are voting will be very fragmented. If none of the candidates gets 50 percent of the vote in a first round, the two top candidates move to a run-off, likely in May or June.
Garcia's surprise candidacy-registered just minutes before a midnight deadline two weeks ago-promises to liven up what was expected to be a contest among several middle-of-the-road candidates. While many Peruvians deeply resent Garcia's economic mismanagement and the rampant corruption during his government, his fiery speeches and campaigning prowess could still gain him significant support.
He is backed by a disciplined party that has the mystique of having survived prolonged persecution by military and civilian dictators. Support for Garcia never completely disappeared. Initially, his policies produced an artificial economic boom, but it fed on massive spending that depleted Peru's reserves. He tried to nationalize the banking system and defiantly limited foreign debt payments to 10 percent of export earnings. Peru became a pariah among multinational lenders, credit dried up and hyperinflation followed.
It was President Fujimori who got the economy back on track and tamed leftist rebel insurgencies that Garcia could not control, but "the public's memory is weak. People are prone to forget the achievements of Fujimori's administration," says Guillermo Loli, project coordinator at the independent polling firm Apoyo. "At the same time, they could be prone to forget the errors committed by the government that came before Fujimori."
The strong favorite is Toledo, who lost to Fujimori last year in an election riddled with irregularities and fraud allegations. But some 6 million of Peru's nearly 15 million voters were too young to vote when Garcia left power, and many older Peruvians are worried they will be seduced by Garcia's eloquence, as well as by an increasing movement to convince Peruvians that the corruption charges against Garcia could be eclipsed by the money laundering, influence peddling and illicit arms dealing that is alleged to have taken place during Fujimori's decade in power.
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