Peru’s Pain May Be Giving Way to Improvement : South America: Fujimori’s strict measures are taking hold, but some doubt his vow to return to democracy.

Large sections of this capital must do without rationed electricity for much of the day. Buildings with boarded-up windows mark the sites of recent terrorist bombings. Hordes of battered taxis suddenly disappear at night, and army troops with armored vehicles take over the streets to enforce a traffic curfew.

Long-beleaguered Lima seems more desolate lately, like a city under siege. Yet the poverty, terrorism and authoritarian rule are somehow less than overwhelming. Life goes on and, who knows, maybe things are getting better.

President Alberto Fujimori is sticking to a painfully austere economic recovery plan that many economists and businessmen say can work. Fujimori also is taking tough action against terrorists. And he insists that Peru soon will return to democratic rule, which he interrupted April 5 with a military-backed coup that closed the Congress and suspended the constitution.

The government has begun a “dialogue” with political parties to work out conditions for the election Nov. 22 of a “constituent congress.” But opposition politicians are skeptical and critical. They predict that Fujimori, who has shown little inclination for political compromise in his two years as president, will try to manipulate the election process and keep his grip on power.

“The government doesn’t want to hold a dialogue about electoral laws--it wants to impose them,” deposed Congresswoman Lourdes Flores said.

“Fujimori never practiced dialogue in his life,” former Vice President Maximo San Roman said.

Fujimori was a former president of Peru’s agricultural university and a political outsider when he ran for president in 1990. Inflation was racing out of control, and a majority of Peruvians were unemployed or underemployed.

Guerrilla warfare and terrorism, unleashed mainly by Maoist zealots of the Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path) movement, had cost 20,000 lives since 1980. The guerrillas reportedly were helping to finance their activities by collecting “taxes” and protection money from Peru’s rampant cocaine traffic.

Desperate for change, voters rallied around Fujimori, and he beat novelist Mario Vargas Llosa by a landslide.

Fujimori brought inflation down to less than 100% a year, trimming government fat and promoting free enterprise. But he complained that corruption and inefficiency in Congress and the courts prevented him from doing all that was needed to fight terrorism, control drug traffic and reactivate the economy.

On April 5, with the aid of the armed forces, he shut down Congress and the courts, censuring the media and arresting several politicians and journalists. It was an autogolpe --in Latin American parlance, a “self-coup.”

The United States and most Latin American governments deplored the move, as did most Peruvian politicians and “opinion leaders.” But the vast majority of Peruvians approved and still do, according to opinion polls.

Fujimori has portrayed the action as a step toward cleaning up government and strengthening democracy. He has replaced dozens of judges and other judicial officials, decreed a series of new laws against terrorism and drugs and given security forces a freer hand to combat subversion and trafficking.

In early May, riot police moved into Lima’s Miguel Castro Penitentiary, where Sendero Luminoso members had long controlled two cellblocks in defiance of authorities. Some of the prisoners were armed, and at least 39 died in a heated battle with the police.

A series of powerful truck-bomb explosions, blamed on the Sendero Luminoso, has left more than a dozen dead and thickened Lima’s war-zone atmosphere. Blocks of high-rises in the San Isidro banking district remain boarded up more than a month after a truck-bomb shattered windows there.

Offices continue to function in the buildings, however, even on days when Lima’s chronic energy shortage leaves the San Isidro district without electricity. Most important buildings have their own emergency generators.

On June 10, in response to the bombings and other terrorist violence, Fujimori imposed an emergency curfew on vehicular traffic from 10 p.m. to 5 a.m. Authorities have issued safe-conduct passes to some taxis and other cars, but traffic after 10 p.m. is a thin trickle. Soldiers at checkpoints stop passing vehicles to look over occupants and documents.

The bombings have abated, at least for the time being, but a new kind of tension has risen in the Lima night. Last week, soldiers opened fire on a car that failed to stop at a checkpoint, killing three passengers. The newspaper El Nacional said the unofficial death toll from curfew shootings totaled about 10.

“Tension Claims New Victims Every Day,” a headline read.

Political tension also is high. Under pressure from the United States and the Organization of American States to restore democracy, Fujimori has repeatedly promised free elections. But vague and variable timetables have triggered repeated opposition protests.

Under the latest official plan, the Nov. 22 elections will select an 80-member constituent congress that will rewrite the constitution and perform legislative functions. The new constitution would be submitted to a referendum.

Foreign Minister Oscar de la Puente, who also is Fujimori’s Cabinet leader or prime minister, “ was quoted in the press last week as saying that the constituent congress will serve as the national legislature until the end of Fujimori’s term in 1995.

But Fujimori said recently that whether new congressional elections are called before 1995 will be up to the constituent congress itself. “The congress will be autonomous,” he told reporters.

In the government’s newly started dialogue with political parties, to which Fujimori agreed under pressure from the Organization of American States to restore democracy, the opposition wants the elections to be held under Peru’s traditional balloting system of proportional representation, in which the percentage of votes won by each party nationwide determines the number of legislative seats it gets. Pollsters say Fujimori’s supporters could win 30% to 40% of the seats under that system.

But if voting was by district, with only one representative from each district, the same 30% to 40% of the vote could translate into a strong legislative majority for Fujimori because the majority of popular votes would be spread among several parties.