As Peru Prepares to Vote, Many Call Election a Sham

Is Peru a democracy?

The short answer is yes, according to Jorge Santistevan, Peru’s widely respected human rights ombudsman.

But many Peruvians disagree. Especially presidential candidates who accuse the nation’s intelligence service of hounding them with egg-throwing goon squads, lurid tabloid newspaper attacks and mysterious power outages that kill microphones during speeches.

And even Santistevan, who heads one of the few institutions that is considered independent here, acknowledges that the close race for Sunday’s presidential election has displayed the authoritarian and shadowy methods of President Alberto Fujimori’s 10-year-old regime.

“It would be wrong to say that this is a reign of terror like the ones that once existed in Eastern Europe, but a situation of fear is developing,” Santistevan said in a recent interview. “The central problem is that our democratic institutions do not work the way the constitution says they should. . . . We have weak institutions. And that is reflected today, more than ever, by the electoral process.”

As Fujimori strives to avoid a runoff election in his bid for an unprecedented third term, international observers criticize the race as unfair and undemocratic.

Whether you see him as a strong-arm democrat or a subtle dictator, Fujimori’s power permeates Peru. Domestic and foreign critics say his intelligence service controls the armed forces, the courts and other institutions. The president has created a 21st century model of an authoritarian regime, they say, that makes his rivals fearful and raises concerns about democracy in the troubled Andean region.

“They have succeeded in creating something that had not existed in Latin America in the past 50 years,” said presidential candidate Alejandro Toledo. “The history of Latin America has been a pendulum between coups and fragile democracies. With a great quantity of sophisticated Machiavellianism, they have created a facade of democracy.”

Toledo accuses the government of dirty tricks ranging from anonymous death threats he has received to the electrical outages that plague his campaign rallies in the provinces. He and other candidates have taken to traveling with portable generators.

Opinion Polls Raise Possibility of Runoff

Despite the alleged harassment, Toledo has surged in opinion polls. A survey late last month by the Apoyo firm indicated that Fujimori would receive 37% of the vote to Toledo’s 27%. Those numbers suggest the possibility that the president will fall short of winning more than 50% and will be forced into a runoff against Toledo, a Stanford-educated economist from a humble indigenous background.

The prospect of such a dramatic setback, ironically, gives Fujimori a strong retort to his foes. Despite all the complaints and concerns--last week even the Clinton administration issued a statement calling for a fair electoral process--Peru will hold a vote and it will be competitive, the president said in a recent interview with The Times.

Fujimori denied allegations that he and Vladimiro Montesinos, a secretive intelligence advisor described by foes as a combination of Rasputin and J. Edgar Hoover, are running both the government and the reelection campaign through the intelligence service known by its Spanish initials: the SIN.

The president said he greatly expanded the powers of the SIN during the past decade in response to threats posed by terrorism, drug trafficking and neighboring Ecuador, which fought a brief border conflict with Peru in 1995. The intelligence service demonstrated its effectiveness in planning the spectacular commando raid that freed 71 hostages held by leftist guerrillas at the Japanese ambassador’s residence here in 1997, Fujimori said.

“The intelligence service was fortified so the nation could be viable,” Fujimori said. As for alleged persecution of rivals, he said, “I gave a public, explicit order: There will be no persecution or surveillance of candidates except the security that the police are obliged to provide.”

It is hard to evaluate the accusations because facts are elusive about the SIN and its de facto chief, Montesinos, a cashiered former army captain. But the intelligence agency has been singled out by a chorus of critics--including the U.S. Senate, which last year cited alleged misconduct by SIN agents in requiring that the body be consulted before additional U.S. aid went to the agency.

Mayor of Capital Says He’s Being Smeared

Lima Mayor Alberto Andrade, who is running for president and ranks third in most polls, says he has suffered from the unchecked power of the espionage apparatus since he was elected to his post in 1995 and emerged as an opposition leader.

Andrade accuses the government of bugging his phones, orchestrating protests by municipal employees unions, using courts and tax collectors to persecute campaign contributors and smearing him with headlines in tabloid newspapers, which are widely seen here as tools of the intelligence service. Last year, disgruntled employees at one tabloid alleged that the spy agency had provided headlines and paid the publication to run them.

“We are living in a pseudo-democracy,” Andrade declared. “We are living in a police state perfected by modern technology. The intelligence service governs, more than Fujimori.”

Some ordinary Peruvians share this view of the government as a kind of sinister Big Brother, according to Giovanna Penaflor, director of the Imasen polling company. In her surveys, Penaflor says, a majority of respondents say that human rights are not respected in Peru, that the courts are not independent and that the election will not be clean.

“It is a system that is not democratic,” she said. “In the focus groups, everyone talks about bugged telephones, about the power of the SIN.”

Fujimori says he has modernized the courts, and he denies using them to retaliate against rivals and opposition media. Nonetheless, judicial actions during the past several years have in effect muzzled television stations by helping to drive anti-government programs and personalities off the air.

There is a jarring disconnect between the world view of impoverished Peruvians, who make up about half the population of 27 million, and the smaller middle and upper-middle classes. Working residents in urban shantytowns and the provinces get their information from the aggressively pro-government television stations and tabloids, which provide lurid news of sex and crime. In contrast, the elite watches more-independent cable stations and reads relatively sophisticated publications, some of which hammer the Fujimori administration with indiscriminate ferocity.

Gilberto Hume, director of a cable station owned by the respected newspaper El Comercio, compares the regime’s media strategy to the thuggish but artful ways historically used by Mexico’s Institutional Revolutionary Party. The Mexican ruling party long retained tight control of television and other mass media while it allowed the survival of independent print media with small readerships, preserving the appearance of free expression.

Ombudsman Santistevan, who has endured tabloid campaigns questioning his patriotism, says there are indications that the government systematically harasses dissidents and controls media and institutions. He says the intelligence service lacks accountability because it answers exclusively to the president.

As for the election, international observers echo concerns that the process is unfair because its roots go back to Fujimori’s 1992 “self-coup,” in which the president and military temporarily shut down Congress and reorganized the government. Fujimori’s congressional allies later ousted three high court judges who ruled that a law permitting him a third term was unconstitutional. Legislators backing the president then blocked a proposed referendum on his candidacy.

In a report late last month, the Atlanta-based Carter Center asserted that Fujimori enjoys disproportionate and biased media coverage and cited allegations that the government has used food distribution programs and other state resources to further his reelection bid.

“Irreparable damage to the integrity of the election process has already been done,” the Carter Center concluded, “but improvements still can and should be made because candidates and parties are competing, citizens are participating in the process and the electoral outcomes are not assured.”

While his allies dismiss the foreign observers as “neocolonialists,” Fujimori responds with characteristic agility. He recently distanced himself from attacks on rivals by pro-government media, saying the latter were misguidedly currying favor with him.

Fujimori also scoffed at those who say that Montesinos has become dangerously powerful since the ouster of a once-influential armed forces chief, which led to promotions of generals loyal to the intelligence advisor. The president said his signing of a peace accord with Ecuador in 1998 made it clear that he, not the security forces, is in charge.

“That is tangible proof that this government is not a facade,” he said. “This is a regime, unlike previous ones in the Peruvian state, with the authority granted it by the constitution.”

Incumbent Stresses His Policies’ Successes

Fujimori is a master political strategist, and a recurring strategy has served him well: He emphasizes the big picture. When others cry authoritarianism, he recalls the near-anarchy he inherited and his herculean efforts to restore order.

The United States certainly shared this view in the 1990s. Fujimori delivered in areas that are U.S. priorities in Latin America: He installed a healthy free-market economy, crushed terrorist groups and cracked down on cocaine trafficking. Peru became a top recipient of aid from the U.S. and international organizations. And as other democracies of the Andean region convulse, Fujimori presides over a relative bulwark of stability and backs a hard-line response to a civil conflict in Colombia whose regional repercussions worry U.S. policymakers.

Some Peruvians feel that U.S. policy has been excessively cautious and pragmatic--except for isolated voices such as former Ambassador Dennis Jett, who during his tenure from 1996 to 1999 expressed concern about the fragility of democracy here. In recent months, the State Department has spoken out on human rights and problems with the election, but the shift seems belated, according to political analyst Santiago Pedraglio.

“I think the State Department enabled the rise of a Fujimori model that could spread elsewhere in the region,” Pedraglio said. “The responsibility is partly our own, but there was also a miscalculation by the United States.”