Peru’s President Alberto Fujimori was scheduled to appear at a victory celebration on the evening of May 28, after electoral authorities announced that he “won” a presidential contest in which he was the only contender. Thousands of Peruvians had been bussed in from low-income districts to the main plaza in San Martín de Porres, a popular district in northern Lima. They waited and waited, but their President was a no-show.
Meanwhile, the “losing” camp was celebrating a victory of another sort a few miles away in the Plaza San Martín, in the heart of downtown Lima. Alejandro Toledo, Fujimori’s main opponent, who withdrew from the race ten days before the vote in protest of the government’s gross manipulation of the electoral process and its refusal to make basic changes to ensure a fair election, was greeted by the sounds of cheers from the thronging crowd. Though he had not won the elections, he had won a great deal. After Toledo withdrew from the race, international election observers followed suit, dealing a serious blow to Fujimori’s credibility at home and abroad. He then successfully turned protests against fraudulent elections into a new civic movement demanding an end to the manipulations and machinations of the Fujimori regime.
International observers—principally the Carter Center/National Democratic Institute and the Organization of American States (OAS)—played an unusually active and forceful role in denouncing not only the fraud evident on the day of the vote, but the regime’s manipulation of the entire electoral process. As international observers gave credence to the denunciations of fraud by local watchdog groups such as Transparencia, resignation over a seemingly inevitable Fujimori victory turned into indignation. And Toledo, an unlikely hero, rose to the occasion. Emboldened by massive popular support in the wake of outright fraud during the first-round vote on April 9, he began to attack Fujimori’s authoritarianism, his manipulation, his political use of state funds, his antipopular economic measures, and his failure to provide a better life for the majority of Peruvians.
The battle for democracy in Peru has only just begun, and it will take place on multiple fronts. On the international front, there is widespread speculation that the OAS will declare the Peruvian elections invalid and call for new ones. Sanctions may follow. The U.S. government, while it has said it will follow the OAS lead, clearly has an important role to play here. State Department officials have already called the vote “invalid” and Fujimori’s presidency “illegitimate.” Resolution 43, passed by both houses of the U.S. Congress before the April 9 vote and signed by President Clinton shortly after, calls for a thorough revision of U.S. relations with Peru if elections were shown to be fraudulent. Washington still likes Fujimori, a dutiful ally in the war against terrorism and drugs who eagerly opened Peru’s economy to foreign investment, but an important segment of the U.S. foreign policy establishment now sees him as a liability.
The second front is within the realm of national politics in Peru. Other opposition leaders have thus far lined up neatly behind Toledo in a way that did not seem possible only a few months ago. Toledo has called on all opposition congresspeople—who together hold 68 out of 120 seats in the new Congress—to refuse to show up on the day they are to be sworn in. Without a simple quorum of 61 members, Congress cannot be convened, and Fujimori cannot then be sworn in as president. Reports that Peru 2000, Fujimori’s party, is trying to bribe opposition candidates to join its forces suggest the government is worried.
The final and perhaps most important front is on the streets. There have been frequent and massive protests, some of which have turned violent, and some of which have been violently repressed by police. Toledo has called for ongoing protests, and a civic strike has been called for July 26. This is the most vulnerable front, given the willingness of Fujimori and his cronies to use brutal means to retain power and assure their continued impunity. Yet it is the front Fujimori fears most, for he has always relied on the court of public opinion to exonerate him, even when he has clearly violated the law.
Fujimori may yet figure out a way to resist international pressure, as he did in the aftermath of his April 5, 1992 self-coup. The hard-liners within his regime seem to see little problem with the idea of hunkering down for a long battle even if it means economic sanctions that bleed the economy dry. Their concern, after all, has never been the Peruvian people, but their own power. But domestic pressure is a new factor in the equation. Shining Path has been defeated and is no longer a major threat. Peruvians still dread a return of the chaos of the late 1980s and early 1990s, but they are increasingly less willing to tolerate abuses and arbitrary rule. The opposition remains riddled with problems, but the diverse forces which comprise it are increasingly united around an anti-Fujimori platform. Fujimori once legitimized his rule with the argument that his methods, though questionable from a democratic perspective, were efficient and effective. But that was then.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jo-Marie Burt is the editor of NACLA Report on the Americas.
