LATIN AMERICA : Fujimori’s Foes Trail Badly as Peru Vote Nears

LIMA, Peru — Three years after he seized dictatorial powers in a military-backed “self coup” against an opposition Congress, President Alberto Fujimori is asking voters to give him a second five-year term in office.

Fujimori, 56, is the favored candidate in Sunday’s presidential balloting, but there is widespread doubt about whether he will win a first-round victory or be forced into a runoff vote.

Top challenger Javier Perez de Cuellar, the former U.N. secretary general, trails far behind in polls, with a dozen others bringing up the rear. But unless Fujimori wins more than 50% of the valid votes, he will have to face Perez de Cuellar, 75, in a second round.

But polls have often failed to forecast election results accurately in Peru, where voters are notoriously fickle and frequently less than candid.

In 1990, for example, polls indicated that novelist Mario Vargas Llosa would win the presidential election. But Fujimori, a former head of the National Agricultural University and a political neophyte, popped out of the shadows to nip at Vargas Llosa’s heels and then defeat him in a runoff.

Fujimori has had a busy first term. He takes credit for taming hyper-inflation, stimulating economic growth of more than 12% last year and subduing the ferocious Sendero Luminoso, or Shining Path, guerrilla movement.

On April 5, 1992, Fujimori suspended the constitution and shut down Congress, which he accused of obstructing his pacification and economic recovery programs. Later that year, under international pressure, he called congressional elections that were boycotted by major opposition parties. With a pro-Fujimori majority, the new Congress rewrote the constitution and eliminated a longtime ban on immediate reelection of the president.

Fujimori says he has no regrets over shutting down Congress in 1992: “I am absolutely unrepentant because the main objective of the April 5 emergency measures has been fulfilled.”

The party Fujimori created, Change 90-New Majority, appears to have no chance of winning a majority in a Congress also to be elected Sunday. Analysts predict that the 120 seats will be divided among 10 or so political groups and that if Fujimori is reelected, passage of his legislative proposals will depend on negotiation and compromise.

“It’s not something that fits in easily with his style,” one independent analyst said.

Perez de Cuellar and other presidential candidates have accused Fujimori of trampling democracy and ruling as a dictator. While Perez de Cuellar has not criticized the essence of Fujimori’s free-market economic policies, he has charged that social neglect by the administration has brought increased poverty. Others have accused the administration of corruption and human rights violations, but such accusations have had little apparent resonance among pro-Fujimori voters.

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Meanwhile, Perez de Cuellar’s stiff style and poorly organized campaign has failed to generate great public enthusiasm. “People don’t like him. He is not a strong campaigner,” pollster Giovanna Penaflor said.

Fujimori’s ratings in the polls began to falter in February, however, amid a bloody border conflict with Ecuador. Reports from the battleground contradicted the president’s repeated claims that Peru had ejected Ecuadorean troops from a disputed border post. Then the opposition blasted Fujimori for agreeing to a cease-fire while, they claimed, Ecuadorean troops still occupied Peruvian soil.

The opposition also is warning of possible fraud in Sunday’s elections. Two non-governmental organizations plan to deploy thousands of trained election observers to guard against irregularities.