Election Circus in Peru
Fujimori vs. the US-groomed Challenger Toledo
From Peru Action and News, May 2000
The April presidential elections in Peru have led to a runoff between President Alberto Fujimori and his closest challenger Alejandro Toledo. The Fujimori-Toledo runoff has now been set for May 28th. The fight over the vote count has revealed intense infighting within Peru’s ruling classes. It has also shown that the US imperialists are worried about greater political instability developing in Peru and throughout the region.
First elected in 1990, Fujimori wants to stay in power for an unprecedented third term. With the complete support of the U.S., he has ruled Peru with dictatorial powers since 1992. That year, in response to major advances by the People’s War led by the Communist Party of Peru, Fujimori led a military “self-coup” and installed his own Congress, Constitution and judiciary—all to unleash further attacks against the revolution.
From early on in the electoral process, Fujimori pulled every trick to stay in power. The current Constitution (which Fujimori himself imposed in 1993!) prohibits him from seeking a third term. In 1997 three constitutional judges ruled that this meant Fujimori could not run again. So Fujimori had them dismissed. When opposition forces organized a mass referendum against Fujimori running again, the referendum was declared void by the Fujimori-controlled congress.
This election has been the usual political circus full of official corruption and manipulation, taken to new heights. While rival candidates cried “foul” and led mass protests in the streets of Lima, the Fujimori forces ran roughshod over the supposedly fair and democratic electoral process. During the past year as the electoral campaigns went into full swing, Fujimori worked closely with his chief intelligence officer (and long-time CIA operative), the notorious Vladimiro Montesinos, to attack his opponents. Rock-throwing goons and engineered black-outs disrupted campaign rallies. Fujimori’s tight control of the media barred his opponents from TV and radio air time, and the tabloids ran smear attacks against them. A big scandal broke when it was reported that Fujimori supporters had forged over a million voter registration signatures.
The Fujimori campaign openly distributed food and land as rewards for votes. There were pre-stuffed ballot boxes, missing ballot boxes, and many people showed up to vote only to be told that someone else had voted in their name, hours ago. The military provided the couriers for transporting the ballot boxes. There was even an Internet site where the official election results were being changed by Fujimori supporters.
Toledo Who?
Alejandro Toledo of the Perú Posible electoral coalition emerged as the only real challenger to Fujimori’s re-election bid. Toledo styles himself as a man of humble origins - a former shoeshine boy with indigenous roots, whose heart, he claims, is with the people. He poses as a political outsider, as a genuine alternative to Fujimori’s reign of terror. He says that he would be a president who could finally represent the workers and peasants of Peru. His sudden prominence is portrayed as a grass roots upsurge, a popular rising to unseat the corrupt tyrant.But Toledo has spent decades training in the complex skills of ruling Third World countries like Peru for the interests of international empire. Toledo was born poor. But as a young man he made a lucky connection with Peace Corps personnel, and came to the U.S. to attend prestigious universities. He got two master’s degrees plus a Ph.D. in economics at Stanford, then worked for the Harvard Institute for International Development. His Belgian wife (also Stanford trained) took U.S. citizenship years ago. Toledo served as chief economic adviser to Peru’s Central Bank and as its Minister of Labor in the 1980s. He has worked for the World Bank and has many connections with Peru’s business community. He set up a financial consultant business to service domestic and foreign investors in Peru. It is reported that he has already opened dialogue with Montesinos and the armed forces.
 Anti-Fujimori protesters burn US flag outside the palace gates in Lima during a recent demonstration. |
Toledo is capitalizing on the hatred for Fujimori that is churning up among the broad masses. But just like Fujimori, Toledo represents and serves Peru’s big capitalists and big landlords, class forces that are intimately tied to imperialism. Over the past few years, the US-backed Fujimori regime has continued its slash-burn-stomp-bludgeon brand of political rule, angering and alienating not only the basic masses of ordinary people but much broader forces in Peruvian society. Mass demonstrations and campaigns have involved tens of thousands of Peruvians from many walks of life, and continue to erupt. And now, many - even up into the ruling classes - are infuriated by Fujimori’s blatant use of the police and intelligence apparatus to suppress electoral opposition.
Toledo’s candidacy arose at a moment there is considerable anti-Fujimori sentiment and struggle to tap into. But in fact the whole electoral process offers no real solutions for the Peruvian people. Toledo’s campaign platform says he would stick to the course of Fujimori’s economic program. What does this mean for the people of Peru? It means that more than 50% of them would continue to earn incomes below the official poverty level. Even if Toledo wins and follows through with the 400,000 jobs he promises, it would be a drop in the bucket to the millions who need work. It means that the government of Peru will continue to privatize Peru’s natural and economic resources - selling the wealth and future of the country to the highest international bidder (at a fraction of the value). A Toledo presidency will not provide the Peruvian people with any real resolution to the grinding poverty imposed by the imperialists under the auspices of the IMF and World Bank.
US Shows Who’s Boss
Early on, there were exit poll projections that Fujimori lacked a majority of the votes, and that a Fujimori-Toledo runoff would be required. Some polls even placed Toledo in the lead. Then suddenly there was a mysterious slow-down in the vote count. Shipments of the tally sheets were mysteriously waylaid on their way to the central computer center. Fujimori operatives were caught with pre-marked ballots. Some ballots had wax over the boxes for other candidates (making it impossible to mark their names with a vote). When some media began announcing that Fujimori had won a majority and no runoff would be held, Toledo lashed back. He denounced these results as fraud and declared that he would not recognize a Fujimori victory. He then mobilized tens of thousands of people to march into the streets of Lima demanding a runoff. Marchers were greeted with tear gas but they threw rocks and these same teargas cannisters back into the grounds of the presidential palace.At this point, the U.S. stepped in to declare that a first-round victory for Fujimori would not be acceptable. Two days before the official count was released, White House spokesman Joe Lockhart stated that “We expect there will be a runoff...” The US Ambassador to Peru, the US under-secretary of State, and Madeleine Albright all publicly called for the appearance of a fair election and insisted that a runoff was needed. Finally on April 12 Peru’s federal election agency reversed its earlier predictions and announced that Fujimori had fallen short of the 50% required to win. Lima political analyst Fernando Rospigliosi put it succinctly: “The moment I saw the American ambassador on TV saying emphatically that there should be a second round, I knew there would be one.”
Why did the U.S. now object to a straightforward victory for their loyal puppet Fujimori? As the world knows, for years the U.S. has enthusiastically stood by Fujimori and assisted him in carrying out a brutal clampdown against the People’s War, and in the arrest and imprisonment of thousands of revolutionaries and leaders. When Fujimori’s Congress granted complete immunity to military and police who had tortured and murdered thousands of people, the U.S. said nothing. When Fujimori defied a decision by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (arm of the OAS) and withdrew from the court’s jurisdiction, only a faint peep of protest came out of Washington. As Fujimori’s IMF austerity policies brought death by starvation to 36,000 children per year, the U.S. hailed Fujimori for bringing stability and order to Peru.
The U.S. is concerned that Fujimori’s strong-arm tactics may be eroding the base of support for the regime among Peru’s ruling class, and souring the climate for imperialist investment. The Wall Street Journal commented: “In any country, the rule of law and democratic practices are tied to prospects for prosperity... Multinational corporations do not necessarily crave democracy, but they do want stability.” The Washington Post spoke bluntly about what is at stake for the US in the Peruvian elections: “Unless the Peruvian public accepts the second round as legitimate, the country could plunge into a version of the same political chaos that has already enveloped neighboring Ecuador and Colombia. Mr. Fujimori has offered a kind of quasi-authoritarian alternative to such chaos; now however his tactics have themselves become a source of potential instability.”
 This PCP painting depicts the action that initiated the People’s War in 1980. Activists burned election ballot boxes in Ayacucho. |
In the final analysis, despite U.S. attempts to avoid instability, the revolutionary people will not let their fate be settled by elections that choose one ruling class henchman over another to run Peru. Instead the people have kept fighting to advance the Maoist People’s War, because no matter who sits in the palace, the Peruvian state can only serve the interests of the big capitalist and landowning classes closely tied to imperialism - especially US imperialism. The interests of these exploiters are directly opposed to the interests of the vast majority of the Peruvian people and replacing Fujimori with some other face, even with one who claims Indian origins, can only mean continuing poverty, brutality and US domination. The role of the elections is to strengthen and legitimize the rule of the exploiters and oppressors over the people.
The Communist Party of Peru has put it this way: “Do the people need to go to the polls? Is voting in the people’s interests? Looking at the experience of Peru, what revolutionary transformation have the people ever won through elections or parliament? Every gain has been a product of the people’s struggle.”
