It’s a Thankless Job for Peru’s Alan Garcia

Politicians around the world might well envy Peruvian President Alan Garcia’s standing in the public-opinion polls.

As the candidate of the center-left American Popular Revolutionary Alliance, he won the four-way race for the presidency last year with 46% of the vote. This past April, nine months into his five-year term, Garcia enjoyed a positive rating from 72% of his 20 million countrymen, and received failing grades from scarcely more than one citizen in a hundred.

Few sane politicians, however, would want his job.

Peru is a very difficult country to govern. Almost two-thirds of the labor force is inadequately employed. More than half of Lima’s 6 million people live in miserable shantytowns. A similar situation prevails in most provincial cities. Within this bleak context, Garcia faces low prices for Peru’s exports, an inflation rate of about 80% and a $14-billion foreign debt that is badly in arrears.

Most intractable, however, is the six-year-old war with the fanatical Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path) guerrillas. It has claimed about 8,000 lives, and shows every indication of growing worse. Thought to number about 2,000 members, Sendero has carried its bombings and assassinations from its original base, in the impoverished mountain districts of south-central Peru, to many other parts of the country.

Led by former philosophy professor Abibmael Guzman, Sendero is so radical and sectarian that it has little support in Peru, and probably receives no significant aid from outside the country. It denounces as “parliamentary cretins” the Leftist Unity, a coalition of a half-dozen Marxist groups that has the second-largest bloc in Congress. Many of Sendero’s victims have been humble peasant, labor and political leaders linked to Leftist Unity.

Garcia is a perceptive student of his troubled nation. Charisma and style, however, have much to do with his popularity. At 36, he is the youngest chief executive in the hemisphere, and perhaps the world. He has great energy, and delights Peruvians with his frequent balconades --extemporaneous speeches to crowds gathered outside the presidential palace.

Although Garcia inherited a mess, he also has benefited from Peru’s recent political past. A 12-year military dictatorship (1968-1980) instituted a series of ill-fated reforms before it degenerated into a harsh authoritarianism and won the opprobrium of the people. The experience chastened Peru’s generals, making them less enthusiastic about running the country. Much of the public developed a healthy skepticism for panaceas, and limited its expectations of government.

But the ineffectiveness of President Fernando Belaunde, Garcia’s 72-year-old predecessor, brought widespread despair. His conservative economic policies failed, and his one-dimensional military program to end terrorism made little headway. In the Andean countryside the security forces (including the national police, the army and the marines) commonly executed captured guerrillas and, in frustration, slaughtered peaceful peasants, too. In urban areas hundreds of citizens who were detained for questioning simply “disappeared.” Belaunde was unwilling or unable to control his troops. Loath to acknowledge these realities, he did little beyond making vacuous speeches. His was an easy act to follow.

Garcia has vigorously attacked Peru’s problems. He launched a major campaign against Peru’s cocaine lords. He fired 2,000 corrupt policemen--including nearly 200 senior officers, many of whom were linked to the drug traffickers. His domestic economic programs have had moderate success, halving the inflation rate. He has refused to accept an International Monetary Fund austerity program, insisting instead that his country deal directly with its overseas creditors and that this year’s payments not exceed 10% of Peru’s export earnings.

The president has pledged to continue the war on terrorism while protecting human rights. After the military balked at his investigation of a massacre, Garcia fired the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff and two other generals. Viewing Sendero Luminoso as a many-faceted problem, Garcia has begun a substantial investment program for the neglected poor region of Senderist strength. He also appointed a peace commission to coax the guerrillas into submission--an unlikely prospect that nevertheless gave Garcia command of the high ground.

In February, after Sendero responded to the president’s initiatives with a wave of outrages in Lima, Garcia imposed a state of emergency in the capital. He suspended several constitutional guarantees and imposed a curfew for the early-morning hours. But the bloodshed has not abated. June was especially grim: On the 18th, highly disciplined Senderist fanatics being held in three Lima-area prisons staged a coordinated uprising, using homemade flame-throwers and other weapons. After 24 hours of fighting, the security forces retook the jails, killing at least 250 prisoners. Garcia disclosed that about 100 of these had been executed by guards after they had surrendered.

Many Peruvians no doubt believe that these prisoners deserved their fate: Sendero is a group that almost everyone loves to hate. Garcia, however, maintained his credibility by sacking the general commanding the prison guards. The country’s justice minister has resigned. But if the president does not make significant progress soon toward ending terrorism, his popularity will likely fade, weakening his government. He will become vulnerable to the increasingly restive military, which has pressed for greater autonomy in dealing with the problem.