Peru overview

"Viva El Peru" by Kareem Farooq

In the 1980s, Peru's reviews were pretty much all one-star. Hyperinflation, price controls and shortages meant that the economy was based on queueing, the Shining Path rebellion did basically whatever they wanted, and president Alan Garcia had approval ratings in the single figures.

Since then Peru's had a pretty incredible upward trajectory. Most people would now say it's not quite as good as Brazil or Chile, but better than Venezuela or Bolivia. On the 5th of June, they're electing a new President.

Peru for massive bluffers: "I would never have thought Fujimori could get out of her father's shadow, but it looks like it's coming right down to the wire. Best stay up on election night!"

Peru had its main election back in April, but the constitution requires that Presidents win at least 50% of the vote. No-one achieved this, so the country has had a few months to mull it over and are now having a run-off. The first round results looked like this:

Ollanta Humala	31.7%
Keiko Fujimori	23.5%
Pedro Pablo Kuczynski	18.5%
Alejandro Toledo	15.6%
Luis Castaneda	9.8%

By the by, looking at that list of names I would not be able to guess what country we're talking about or even what continent it's on.

I feel bad for dismissing them so briefly, but here are the basic summaries of the candidates knocked out in the primary.

Luis Castaneda: former mayor of the capital city, Lima. Ran for centre-right National Solidarity party, but never really got off the ground outside his home turf. Has a terrifying rictus for a grin. Peru's Rudy Guiliani.

Alejandro Toledo: Social liberal, economic centrist, president 2000-2006. Excellent president and legislator, terrible politician. He started the election campaign as the favourite, but that lead started to dry up when he started meeting people and going on TV. Will now have to fall back on his day jobs, which are professor of economics, senior fellow of the Brookings Institution, and consultant for the UN, OECD and World Bank.

Pedro Pablo Kuczynski: Toledo's former finance minister: somehow got the nomination from the right-wing Christian People's party and despite that ran a highly centrist, technocratic campaign. His performance in the first round was unexpectedly good, and the first sign he was getting votes from anyone who didn't read the business pages and political blogs.

So anyway, on to the real contenders:

Image from keikofujimori.com/

I skipped a few years back up ahead. What happened between Peru's late-eighties calamity and the league-average democracy we see now? Well, cometh the hour, cometh the man: much as happened in Colombia, they elected a strongman. Alberto Fujimori looks like a little old Japanese man and that's because he is. However, that didn't stop him telling Peru that he was counting to three, and that Peru should look him in the face because he wasn't joking.

Alberto took an axe to the well-meaning market interventions that had screwed up Peru's economy and, after the "Fujishock", business started up again. He was also undeniably effective at dealing with the Shining Path, albeit that he used the army to suspend Congress and rewrote the constitution in the process.

A few years back, Alberto expressed an interest in running this year. Why isn't he doing that? Well, because he's serving a 25-year jail term for ordering extrajudicial killings, orchestrating kidnappings and flamboyant corruption.

Keiko's campaign platform:

• Reduce regulation on businesses and reduce cost of doing business by 20%
• Simplify tax regime, decrease taxes on enterprise and increase them on mining windfalls
• Build prisons and increase the types of crime that carry the death penalty
• Economic priority is strong growth (>7% year)
• "Mechanisms of coercion and control"
• Maybe or maybe not a presidential pardon for Dad.

Image from Omni-Bus.com

In the dying days of the Fujimori presidency, Ollanta Humala was part of a military uprising against the government. Ollanta himself later got a congressional pardon, but his brother is, in fact, serving 25 years for kidnapping and murder associated with the uprising. Peru certainly has election fever right now, but all things considered it's amazingly civil.

Humala's power base is in the rural poor; he's from the indigenous Quecha people (named after an Inca general, no less) and his father was in the Communist party. In past elections he's very much played the left-wing populist, declaiming into a microphone while wearing a red t-shirt. He even got an endorsement from Hugo Chavez. Of course, many people live their life based on doing the opposite of whatever Hugo Chavez recommends,and that endorsement probably killed his last campaign.

Humala has apparently learnt the lesson and is now dancing the andean version of the Potomac shuffle, hard. He's bought a suit and tie and started talking about the independence of the Central Bank.

Ollanta's campaign platform:

• Public ownership of basic services like water and sanitation
• Decrease sales tax and increase tax on mining companies
• Tight control over budget deficits and inflation
• Economic priority is reducing poverty rates and increasing equality
• Create a High Commission for Peace and Development, who will award compensation for victims of violence over the last decade
• Maybe or maybe not a presidential pardon for Bro

So, who'll win?

It's hard to say. For most of the time since the first round they've been neck-and-neck, with a high number of undecideds. The centrists and technocrats all fell at the first round, leaving their supports to choose between hard right and hard left; or, in the tasteful words of a prominent public intellectual, like choosing between AIDS and Cancer.

Humala has been trying to convince socially liberal Toledo supporters that he won't go around collectivizing things for fun, and Fujimora is certainly not making any play for voters who support gay rights. What Fujimora has done, apparently, is distance herself from her father's negatives (suspending congress, death squads) while holding on to his law-and-order credentials.

Back in the parliamentary elections, Humala's party (Gana Peru) got the most seats, and would probably have the easiest time building a coalition. On the other hand, the most recent polls seems to show a movement to Fujimora. The lead now is larger than the sampling error, but smaller than the number who say they'll spoil their ballots. Both sides are campaigning flat out to get the last few undecideds.

Since Humala's base is in the more remote rural parts of the country, I think we'll either see Fujimori declare victory early on election night, or Humala grind out a win in the last ballot box to be counted.