The events leading up to the second re-election of President Alberto Fujimori in Peru attracted a great deal of interest, even outside Latin America. Some observers saw this debatable victory of the outgoing president as confirmation of a regression of democracy supposedly afflicting the region.
Some of the recent events are in fact quite alarming: in Ecuador there was an aborted coup by some sections of the military in conjunction with Native Indian militants, which led to the- legally spurious- replacementof President Mahuad byVice-President Noboa. In Venezuela the process that took Chavez to power has generally been seen as a worrying trend for democracy: for a more detailed description see a recent article on the subject (‘Constitutional reform in Venezuela: a return to authoritarianism in Latin America?’ Acque & Terre no. 1.2000), but clearly the hopes raised initially by Chavez are now wilting, since he has been unable to maintain his promises, and has already lost much of the enormous stock ofconfidence he enjoyed in 1999,. In Bolivia PresidentBanzer has declared a state of emergency to repress popular unrest. In Colombia the peace process is backfiring without any practical solutions in sight. And now in Peru in elections whose legitimacy has been called into question not only by the opposition but also by international observers, Fujimori won a third term of office to which he probably doesn’t even have the right, if the spirit of the constitution he himself introduced was respected.
The five countries in the Andean Community are thus all faced with complex, very diverse problems that do, however, have a common denominator: the difficulty in consolidating democracy in a world region in which economic modernisation has failed to produce results able to defeat the substratum of poverty and social inequalities affecting most of the population.
There can be no doubt that Fujimori’s political career reveals his authoritarian and opportunist nature. His ten-year presidency of Peru (1990-2000) has been characterised by ups and downs, although his efforts have mainly been focused on consolidating personal power and the systematic search in Peruvian society for the right backing to strengthen his absolute control over the situation.
In an article in 1995 (‘The apparent contradictions in the fragile Peruvian democracу?, Acque & Terre, no. 1.1995) we tried to illustrate the real reasons for his clear-cut victory at the time over Pérez de Cuellar, a candidate backed by international public opinion, who suffered a landslide defeat in the presidential elections at the hands of Fujimori, disliked by many (outside Peru).
That victory was mainly due mainly to; 1) the success of Sendero Luminoso, whose guerrilla action and terrorism has had disastrous consequences for the country, undermining the very foundations of Peruvian society; 2) the absolute lack of confidence in the members of the traditional parties who had taken the country to the verge of bankruptcy; 3) the good economic results following the Fujichoque (Fujimori’s shock therapy) immediately after his election in 1990, skilful accompanied by populist-style social policy – something Fujimori excels in. And although this policy does nothing about the causes of poverty afflicting a good half of the Peruvian population, it has great impact in terms of image on the most needy classes.
This cocktail had made El chino (as Fujimori is popularly known in Peru, despite his Japanese origins) an invincible candidate for many years. Positivelyviewed by most of the Peruvian population, despite the diffidence of international observers and the members of traditional parties, who have been kept on the sidelines in the Fujimorі decade, these results have been accompanied by spurious practices, which have gradually worsened over the years.
Firstly, after having been elected in the second round of elections in 1990 thanks to the backing of all the opposition candidates, whose objective was to defeat the majority candidate ofthe first round, the writer Vargas Llosa -Fujimori couldnot rely on significant parliamentary backing at the time of his election. His movement the improvised Cambio 90 created to back him in the elections, only obtained a few seats (in Peru the parliamentary elections are held at the same time as the first round of the presidential elections).
Fujimori thus had to seek backing for his government. This backing was to come from the army: a choice which must be seen in light of the situation in the 1990s, when Peru was in the grips of afully-fledged internal war against Sendero Luminoso. The upshot was that the military ended up occupying leading positions in the life of the country.
Fujimori asked parliament for special powers to combat terrorism, He failed to obtain them and so dissolved parliament with the help of the armed forces. This was the Fujigolpe or coup of April 1992. The opposition parties did not take part in the subsequent elections for the constituent assembly. The dictator president was thus free to see that a constitution was approved with greater presidential powers. The new constitution was then ratified by a popular referendum in October 1993.
Meantime, Sendero Luminoso had been struck down. Then with the capture of the lider máximo, Ahlmael Guzmán (September 1992), the terrorist group collapsed and in no time lost most of its strength. Life went back to normal in Peru.
The downside of the end of the Senderista emergency was much greater power for the armed forces. Having played a leading role in defeating terrorism and allied with an authoritarian president, they became the real columns in Fujimori’s political edifice.
A key figure is this situation was Fujimori’s right-hand man, Vladimir Montesinos the presidential adviser and head of the increasingly powerful internal intelligence service (SIN). A dense network of people and economic interests was built up in a two-way system between Montesinos and the president. All twenty-two leading army officials in Peru (eight generals and fourteen brigadiers) had been classmates of Montesinos, all having graduated from the Chorrillos MilitaryAcademy inJanuary 1966. To achieve this situation, clearly all the other officers unwilling to swear blind loyalty to the president were purged. Thus the military can now be totally identified with the president, and all other careers in the armed
forces are completely blocked. This topbrass mafiawas due to retire en masse at the
end of 2000, but legislative changes are already prepared to extend their mandate for
another five years (not surprisingly, the same five years as Fujimori’s third term of
office).
In parallel to this process of subjecting the military top brass, Fujimori has gradually extended the SIN’s range of action, which under the wily guidance of Montesinos has developed a great capacity for disinformation and the systematic destruction of Fujimori’s rivals.
The other key point in Fujimori’s power is his absolute control over the mass media, again obtained by resorting to unorthodox methods, such as expropriation on the basis of any pretext. One emblematic case is that of Baruch Ivcher, the owner of Canal 2 Frequencia Latina, a television channel not particularly critical of Fujimori, but which became public enemy number one following programmes exposing SIN and Montesinos. Ivcher, an Israeli become a naturalised Peruvian, was expropriated and stripped of Peruvian citizenship.
As a consequence of such methods there is absolutely no possibility of dissent on Peruvian television. The six channels in the country did not accept any kind of electoral propaganda from the opposition, which was forced to turn to cable Tv with its very limited audience.
Although a similar situation has not yet been reached in the printed press, the television bias is enough to justify the claims of absolutely unfair practices in the Peruvian electoral campaign.
The 1992 constitution gives the president enormous powers. The power attributed to the single chamber in parliament is very limited, and the figure of the prime minister is subordinate to that ofthe president, the true master of the situation. In 1995 elections Fujimori won a comfortable parliamentary majority, which gave him even more room for manoeuvre in his second term in office.
But the situation in the country was aggravated when Fujimori decided to stand for election yet again. The initial response of the constitutional tribunal was to reject the idea. But to get over this difficulty, Fujimori sacked the three judges and replaced them with his own men. The new response of the tribunal was to accept his candidature, and so his re-relección became very real prospect.
Some of the opposition candidates had the right cards to do well: Alberto Andrade, mayor of Lima and Luís Castañeda Lossio, who had built up an excellent reputation while chairman ofthe Peruvian Institute of Social Security (IPss). But the opposition’s failure to come together and back a single candidate in addition to the systematic disinformation campaign in the press reduced their chances to a minimum.
In the last few months of the campaign, however, an outsider without any establishment backing came to the fore: Alejandro Toledo. Campaigning in the Peruvian deep south with hardly no coverage from the mass media, he surprisingly attracted most of those discontented with Fujimori.
An economist with several degrees (doctorate from Stanford and professorship at Harvard) Toledo made a considerable impact on the electorate. His Andean traits and direct comprehensible messages caught the imagination of Peruvian society no longer willing to support at any cost the hard fist of the military bosses and desperate for lasting deep changes in living standards.
The ‘T of trabajo‘ (‘work’) was Toledo’s slogan. He described himself as ‘a living example of how a man can be transformed by education’.
Faced with the growing popularity of Toledo, many observers began to doubt whether Fujimori would accept the possibility of defeat. The unanimous view was that he would try at all costs to win in the first round in orderto avoid all the opposition votes going to Toledo in the second round.
The Organisation of the American States (OAS) electoral monitoring mission as well as the Carter Foundation, Transparencia and other international institutions all claimed there were serious irregularities in the first round of the elections held on 9 April: there were 1,200,00 more ballot slips than voters, and serious anomalies were found in polling stations were international or opposition observers were present, the Toledo list (Perù Posible) disappeared from many ballot slips, and so on.
The saga of the electoral count in the first round lasted several days. In the end the official results gave Fujimori 49.79 percent of votes and Toledo 40.31 per cent. This mean there had to be a second round.
The impression from the contradictory information from Lima immediately after April 9th was that of a rigged count, effected by electoral institutions dependent on the president, who right up to the last moment had been hoping for a first-round victory. International pressure and the blatant anomalies highlighted by the observers and the opposition made it impossible however for him to claim victory in the first round.
Ahead of the second round, the OAS mission asked that the electoral institutions quickly rectify the anomalies, and also guarantee television coverage for the opposition candidates.
A few days before the vote, Toledo asked for a postponement of twenty days of the second round, due to be held on May 20th, so that the necessary measures could be adopted to ensure electoral transparency. The OAS agreed to this request, but it was turned down by the Peruvian authorities. Toledo thus then declared he was withdrawing from the second round, and asked his electorateto abstain or spoil their votes.
Given the unsatisfactory nature of the measures adopted by the JNE and ONPE, the two institutions with the task of organising the elections, which at the last moment changed the programme used for the count instead of correcting the existing mistakes on the programme used in the first round, the OAs mission also decided to withdraw, on the grounds it was unable to approve the electoral process.
Nonetheless, the vote was duly held on May 28th, with Toldedo’s name on the ballot despite the fact he had asked for it to be with removed: his wish was now that the electorate should abstain.
In this turbulent situation – elections with no opposition and with no international observers – Fujimori won 51.2 per cent of the valid votes, Toledo 17.68, while 29.93 per cent were void, and were thus the response to Toldedo’s request. It must be borne in mind that voting is obligatory in Peru with very heavy sanctions for defaulters, and this prevented any massive boycott, although abstentions were surprisingly high at 19 per cent.
Fujimori was thus re-elected again at the end of a process characterised by irregularities. The real situation, however, was effectively stalemate, paving the way to greatpolitical instability in Peru.
Toledo denounced the electoral results. He claims that his withdrawal was obligatory because the electoral fraud (there is no lack of evidence) would in any case have meant victory for Fujimori, and therefore taking part in the second round would have legitimated that fraud. It is difficult to claim, however, that Fujimori is not a legitimate president. Undoubtedly irregular, the election process must be judged negatively, but Fujimori has form on his side.Who can deprive him of authority now? United States pressure on the OAS, with the aim of imposing sanctions on Peru, was cooled at the ministerial meeting of Windsor (4th June) by opposition from many Latin American countries (especially Mexico, Brazil and Venezuela), who were against adopting drastic measures. Ultimately many Latin American governments view the Us use of the principle ofrespect for democracy as a way of interfering in domestic issues. The same governments have already expressed several reservations over the NATO action in Kosovo and Yugoslavia, pursued outside the United Nations system, and thus are reluctant to accept the principle of humanitarian intervention.
At the same time the Peruvian example causes concern among countries in the region because it is not an isolated case, but part of a very difficult stage in the developmentof democracy in Latin America.
A trade-off between the two positions – interference in the name of democracy and respect for the national political dimension – is problematic, as moreover, we are aware in Europe (the Austrian ambassador to OAS has claimed that the European Union should look on the decision made by the OAS in the Peruvian case as an example to be upheld).
Although predictably Fujimori, who certainly is not famous for his scruples, will dig into his positions, the equally unpredictable Peruvian situation opens up scenarios that were unthinkable a few months back. Fujimori no longer has a parliamentary majority (only 52 deputies out of total 120) and the opposition finally seems to be rallying round Toledo. Fujimori will no longer be able to govern in the style he is accustomed to, and there are now deepening cracks in his power base. There are also rumbles of discontent in the armed forces, and even in the absence of explicit sanctions, Fujimori’s Peru seems bound to suffer from growing international isolation.
Will this situation bring Fujimori down before the end of his term of office? It’s difficult to say. At present the opposition, sidelined for ten years, is back in the game with considerable scope for action: its success and the related weakening of Fujimori will ultimately depend on the president’s decisions, rather than international pressure.
In the past the Peruvian opposition has often guilty of underestimating Fujimori’s enterprise and resources, and so has bungled its moves on several occasions: in the second round in 1990, during the 1992 autogolpe or ‘self-coup’, its choice of candidate in 1995, the belated unity in 2000, and even Toledo’s withdrawal from the second round on May 28th.
Going back to the conclusions of the 1995 article mentioned above, we may sum up by saying that in Latin America democracy must once more reckon with the specific political and social features characterising the region.
However, compared to five years ago, Fujimori has definitely overstepped the mark in his authoritarianism, and recent events clearly mark a backward slide for Peruvian democracy.
While in the Southern Cone (Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay and Chile) there is now what may be considered stable democracy, with the exception of Paraguay, a country with a level of development nearer its An- dean neighbours than its fellow MERCOSUR members, there are several ominous signs for democracу.
In our opinion, this does not imply a relapse for democracy in Latin America. The results of economic modernisation and political democratisation begun in the 1980s are tangible and irreversible.
But when economic results do not come fast enough for a significant part of the population and society encounters great difficulty in organising and making its voice felt, and thus is unable to form a counterweight to the power of the political classes or ‘de facto power’, then authoritarian temptations will emerge again. In this sense, the Andean countries are still at risk.
The basic scenario is thatof a greatchallenge facing Latin America in the twenty-first century. The great enemy to be defeated is the social gap separating the elites from the rest of the population. Only when this challenge hasbeen won, will democracy no longer be in danger.