Problems Cloud Peru’s Upcoming Runoff Vote

Peru’s runoff vote May 28 is vulnerable to fraud due to bug-plagued computers and other problems, monitors said Wednesday.

A month after a first-round vote tainted by vote-rigging fears, logistical delays ranging from printing of ballot sheets to the installation of new vote-counting software could undermine the credibility of President Alberto Fujimori’s reelection bid.

“I fear second-round elections will be as contaminated by irregularities as the first round. The process is vulnerable to fraud,” said Percy Medino, spokesman for Transparency, a vote monitor funded by the U.S. government.

Unfair conditions, including a media heavily biased against opposition candidate Alejandro Toledo, also persist despite some government-instigated improvements such as free spots on state television for the opposition, Medino added.

Peru faced a full-blown political crisis in April: Monitors and the United States called for a runoff election even before all the votes were counted, after computer glitches sparked fears of fraud and sent protesters to the streets.

To the international community’s relief, Fujimori fell about 20,000 votes short of an outright win, forcing him into a runoff with Toledo, a free marketeer with populist touches whose Indian roots and rise from poverty won him support in this Andean nation.

The president, running for an unprecedented third term, won 49.89% of the vote April 9 against Toledo’s 40.15%. They are running neck and neck in polls this month.

Fujimori, popular for reviving a moribund economy and defeating leftist rebels since his 1990 election, has said that the elections were fair, and he criticized an “international conspiracy” against Peru.

Transparency’s statements echo those of the Organization of American States, or OAS, and of the government’s own human rights monitor, the ombudsman’s office, which have called for a postponement in the vote, saying there is not enough time to correct the problems.

The OAS, the region’s top diplomatic body, has said that more time is needed to install software allowing it to monitor the computer vote count in real time.

Disorganization is also bedeviling vote preparations. Two hundred officials have only just started training 500,000 Peruvians who will act as vote counters, vote monitor sources say. And some software has yet to be tested.

Rights organizations have received allegations that government officials have threatened to cut off state aid to soup kitchens whose members voted for Toledo in the first round. The kitchens give daily meals to hundreds of thousands of poor Peruvians.

Criticism of potential fraud has overshadowed most other election issues such as poverty and low wages, which are key voter concerns in this nation of 25 million.

“Polls show there is a crisis of confidence in the electoral process. . . . Immediate and comprehensive measures are needed to ensure its transparency,” said Barry Levitt, political analyst for the National Democratic Institution and the Carter Center, two U.S. groups monitoring the vote.

There have been signs of reform, however. Peru’s national election board has promised to give Toledo free air time on national state television and radio, and the United States has said it has seen improvement.

Fujimori has agreed to a televised debate with Toledo, who had threatened to withdraw from the race if no improvements were made.

But Transparency warned that government reforms since the April vote fell short of what was needed. “The changes so far are largely cosmetic,” Medino said.