In a shantytown on the edge of Lima, President Alberto Fujimori is an omnipresent patriarch whose political “good works” are scattered throughout this dusty hillside like bits of gold. In a community where most homes are only partially built, on one corner sits a red brick school. There are paved streets, a new water tower, a sewerage system and a government-sponsored bakery and soup kitchen for residents too poor to keep their families healthy any other way.
In case anyone has doubts about who is responsible for all this, a message in bold letters is plastered on a hillside towering over the community: “Peru 2000,” Fujimori’s party. The incumbent is the front-runner in Peru’s upcoming presidential election.
But much more than Fujimori’s or even Peru’s future will be at stake.
The election on April 9 comes at a time of uncertainty over the destiny of South America’s four northwestern nations–Peru, Colombia, Equador and Venezuela–which are threatened by drug barons, terrorist warfare, military takeover and economic turmoil.
The unfolding dramas in all four nations have implications for the United States, which considers the 1.4 million-square-mile territories (about one-third the size of the U.S.) strategically important and backs their interests with many tax dollars and occasional talk of sending U.S. troops or other resources to assist local armies in anti-guerrilla warfare.
“The government in Peru has made things better for us,” said Alicia Carlos, who runs the bakery and soup kitchen in this town created 27 years ago by squatters running from extreme poverty in the countryside.
Fujimori’s support is strongest here and in scores of other impoverished places like it. While Fujimori might be considered the benevolent leader of the poor by his supporters, others–particularly his political challengers–assert he isa tyrant willing to silence his opposition using the same sinister political force that has won him converts in communities like this.
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It is these two faces of Peru’s complicated leader that have split the nation over whether Fujimori should win re-election on April 9 for a third term.
Polls had shown Fujimori with a comfortable lead over his opponents, but in recent weeks a barrage of election scandals tarnishing Fujimori’s government and a scrappy contender–one who appeals to the poor whom Fujimori has claimed as his own political strength–have turned the race into a real contest. Analysts predict Fujimori’s standing is not sufficient to guarantee the 50 percent of the vote he needs to avoid a runoff.
Critics have complained about efforts by the government to control the vote through dirty tricks and other unfair election practices.
The White House has added its voice to the squabble. In a statement issued in Washington this week, the White House said it was concerned about the fairness of the election, and it urged the government to guarantee conditions for a fair vote.
In an interview with the Tribune, Fujimori also expressed concern over developments in his South American neighborhood.
“There is concern [over the fate of the region],” he said. “This type of instability creates some danger [for all of the] neighboring countries.”
On Thursday, the House approved a $1.7 billion package for Colombia, which has been threatened by the region’s longest terrorist war. Most of the package would provide weapons and military training targeted at toppling that nation’s drug czars and the terrorist commanders who support them.
In Ecuador, President Jamil Mahuad was ousted from office in January in a bloodless overthrow. In Venezuela, President Hugo Chavez, a former paratrooper colonel imprisoned in 1992 for leading a failed coup, has angered U.S. officials by lauding Fidel Castro’s style of ruling Cuba. Meanwhile, the U.S. has reason to watch closely because it gets most of its imported oil from Venezuela.
“Seeing the military come back as transitional figures is something we remain very concerned about,” a U.S. intelligence official said.
There is even concern that if terrorism–all but wiped out in Peru but rampant in Colombia–once again threatens the overthrow of a freely elected government, the use of American military resources could not be ruled out.
“I don’t think that’s on the radar screen, but it could get there if the situation in Peru were to become unstable,” said Douglass W. Cassel Jr., who heads the Center for International Human Rights at Northwestern University’s School of Law.
It is such instability that the U.S. hopes to avoid in Peru.
Fujimori has been cheered in the U.S. for remaining Washington’s closest ally in the war against drugs and for vigorously sharing the American dream for open markets and free trade.
Yet some political experts believe Peru is led by an autocrat who has violated human rights.
Fujimori has been criticized for the brutal but popular methods used to all but destroy the Shining Path and Tupac Amaru guerrilla armies that created havoc for more than two decades.
The U.S. State Department blasted Peru’s human-rights record in a February report that cited “serious problems,” including deficiencies in the protection of civil and political rights.
Earlier in February, the Atlanta-based Carter Center, founded by former President Jimmy Carter, said that “political conditions for free and fair elections” had not yet been established.
Many attribute the pre-election turmoil, which includes mounting evidence of forged campaign signatures to place Fujimori on the ballot, unfair control of the press and widespread harassment of opposition candidates, to an uncompromising effort by Fujimori to assure his re-election to a third term, despite a provision in Peru’s 1993 constitution that limits presidential mandates to only two terms.
Fujimori has said his presidential run is legal because it is only his second campaign under that constitution.
“Peru is a very complex country,” a Peruvian businessman said.
“The economy is shot to hell. A million people have been fired from their jobs. Industries have closed down because they can’t compete with cheaper imports.”
But, he said, Fujimori remains popular, especially with the poor, and nobody can dispute how much better life has become in other ways since Fujimori gave his army carte blanche to destroy the Shining Path.
Only weeks ago Fujimori appeared a shoo-in for a third term. He hovered with roughly a 40 percent poll popularity while his closest opponents remained in the single digits.
Things have changed.
The latest figures from Datum Internacional put Fujimori’s lead at 44.7 percent, while the Peru Posible party of charismatic contender Alejandro Toledo is running at 31.4 percent, up from a dismal 5 percent in December.
Many critics say Fujimori’s creative engineering to get into the election race and remain in front is symptomatic of an autocratic style. Many claim he is a master at manipulating governmental institutions–from the military to the courts to Congress–to remain in power.
Author Sally Bowen said she senses a Fujimori shift toward autocracy.
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“I think that [autocracy] has been a clear tendency through the decade, and it has gotten stronger from 1996 onward,” said Bowen, author of “The Fujimori File: Peru and its President 1990-2000.” “There were very subtle changes,” Bowen said. “For instance, they changed the voting system so that you needed four votes instead of three to eliminate a candidacy so that it would be harder for the election board to wipe out Fujimori’s candidacy.”
Francisco Sagasti, a former head of strategic planning at the World Bank and now director of the Agenda: Peru think tank, contends Fujimori has an emperor complex common to the Japan from which his parents emigrated in 1934.
“In the 1930s, Japan was a militaristic, hierarchical society,” Sagasti said. “There wasn’t any concept of a loyal opposition. The emperor governs by divine right. His [Fujimori’s] conception of power is an imperial style of government.”
Fujimori vigorously denies any such penchant and asserts he has taken steps to end any dirty-tricks campaigning. But the man and his mystique have left many with doubts.
“If Fujimori is not elected, terrorism will return under a less powerful president,” said a Lima student in his late 20s. “If he is elected, I am afraid he will move the country toward authoritarianism.”
Others fear that if Fujimori doesn’t solve the problems of unemployment and underemployment, it is only a matter of time until the specter of terrorism rises again.
While hyperinflation was brought under control early in Fujimori’s 10-year presidency, unemployment today is estimated at 9.5 percent and underemployment–those in menial jobs far below their educational and skill potential–is 45 percent. A State Department study indicated that the poor constituted 50 percent of the population of 1997.
“If he doesn’t do something about the poor we will see a return to guerrilla warfare, not in the immediate future but maybe five years down the road,” said a business leader. “If I was desperately poor and couldn’t feed my kids, I’d steal or join a group intent on changing all that. I’m not a bad man, but I would have to do something.”