Toledo Wins Bid for Peru Presidency

Economist Alejandro Toledo won Peru’s presidential election Sunday, according to partial results, completing an odyssey from Andean poverty to prestigious U.S. universities to the front lines of the fight for democracy in his troubled homeland.

Toledo led former President Alan Garcia with 51.6% of the valid ballots, the National Election Agency reported after counting about 70% of the vote. Garcia had 48.3%. Sunday night, Garcia conceded defeat and offered his support to Toledo in rebuilding Peruvian democracy.

About 13% of the almost 15 million voters cast blank ballots. The relatively low number was seen as a rebuff to a campaign by activists who urged Peruvians to cast protest ballots as a message of displeasure with the candidates.

Toledo’s victory ended a 14-month political saga full of tension, intrigue and outsize personalities. The crisis saw the fall of President Alberto Fujimori, who reshaped Peru during an ironfisted decade in power, and the remarkable rise of Toledo, 55, the first elected president of indigenous descent in a nation marked by a history of poverty and injustice.

“Brothers and sisters, tonight is the beginning of the future,” said Toledo, beaming in a gray suit and tie, in a speech to cheering thousands from a hotel balcony. “Tonight, I swear to you I will never let you down. I want to thank the simple and humble men and women of deepest Peru.”

A former World Bank consultant who preaches “market economics with a human face,” Toledo first ran for president in 1995 and received only 3% of the vote. Last year, he ran again and forced Fujimori into a runoff despite an aggressive campaign of dirty tricks by the regime. Toledo then withdrew from last year’s second round, accusing Fujimori of planning to steal the election, and led a protest movement that added street demonstrations to pressure from foreign governments.

Toledo’s national and international resistance campaign contributed to Fujimori’s ouster in November. The militaristic regime dominated by Fujimori’s shadowy intelligence chief, longtime CIA ally Vladimiro Montesinos, collapsed in a whirl of scandal that continues even now.

Toledo returned to the campaign trail and, in a first-round election in April organized by a transition government, emerged as the clear front-runner. In Sunday’s runoff, he warded off an unexpectedly strong comeback by Garcia, a 52-year-old populist whose 1985-90 presidency had left Peru in ruins and forced him into exile.

Reflecting the legacy of a Fujimori regime that institutionalized blackmail and political espionage, the race that ended Sunday was relentlessly negative. Toledo faced accusations that he had used cocaine, fathered an illegitimate child and misused campaign contributions.

Nonetheless, voters rejected Garcia in favor of Toledo’s promises of a reformist government that would rebuild the justice system, promote foreign investment and create jobs at a time when almost two-thirds of the population is out of work or underemployed. Toledo’s Peru Possible party also brought together longtime leaders of the opposition to Fujimori with a diverse assortment of veteran leftists and free-market technocrats.

On Sunday evening, the slogans chanted by crowds in front of Toledo’s hotel headquarters alluded to his pride in his ethnic identity and to their resentment of Fujimori, who has taken refuge in his parents’ native Japan to avoid prosecution.

“Peruvians in government! The Andes in government!” shouted a jubilant Gerardo Condori, 47, an unemployed textile worker from the provincial highlands.

“Toledo is a feisty guy. He’s not selfish,” said Condori, a diminutive man dressed in an alpaca sweater and formal but faded trousers. “He fights for the people, for the provinces, and we provincials are stubborn, we’re tough. We have faith because we have known suffering. I am sure he will fight for us because he has suffered so much.”

Peru’s new leader represents a historic breakthrough for a neglected majority of indigenous and mixed-race citizens. His campaign rallies were full of symbols of and references to the Inca emperors from whom many working-class Peruvians descend.

“For an immense majority of Peruvians who have always seen power as something very remote, this represents a great triumph,” said novelist Mario Vargas Llosa, a onetime presidential candidate himself and one of Peru’s best-known citizens. “An Indian from an indigenous community, coming from the most humble sector of the nation, thanks to his own efforts, has reached a post that is very symbolic. And this in today’s Peru of national crisis is an important psychological factor.”

Toledo was born in Cabana, a wind-swept hamlet typical of the hardscrabble Andean highlands. His 18-member family migrated to the coastal town of Chimbote, where he worked in the streets as a vendor, shoeshine boy and teenage newspaper reporter.

Thanks in part to the tutelage of U.S. Peace Corps volunteers who lived with his family, Toledo made his way to California on a scholarship. He pumped gas and played semiprofessional soccer to support himself while earning a doctorate at Stanford. He spent time as a visiting scholar at Harvard and, after becoming a consultant for the World Bank, advised several Latin American governments and worked in Japan and the United States.

As Peruvians celebrated Toledo’s victory in the streets of Lima, the capital, their joy was mixed with realism and harsh memories. After all, both Garcia and Fujimori were wildly popular at first. Fujimori defeated terrorism and imposed macroeconomic stability, but his presidency ended as catastrophically as Garcia’s.

In some ways, the recent months have been promising. The transition government has begun impressive anti-corruption investigations and has conducted impeccable elections, as evidenced by the efficient vote count and serene atmosphere Sunday night.

But Toledo, who has never held an elected post, is already battling credibility problems. He will have to transcend the politics of personality and break Peru’s tendency to swing between anarchy and tyranny.