This article comes by way of a Web- news site called GlobalSpin.
GlobalSpin has highlighted first Mexico, then Colombia, and this week-
GlobalSpin is highlighting Peru in its reporting.
Archives show a spotlight on issues such as AIDS in Africa- The Mbeki
controversy, The Phillipines, Haiti, Lebanon, China, Korea, Zimbabwe,
etc. So GlobalSpin is becoming a good place to get non-sectarian
Left commentary on issues where information is often hard to come by.
................................ Tony............
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.
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."
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."
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