ELECTIONS-PERU: Scandals Feed Campaign to Cast Blank Ballot

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Abraham Lama

LIMA, Apr 26 2001 (IPS) - Journalist Alvaro Vargas Llosa, once a close adviser of presidential candidate Alejandro Toledo, appealed to Peruvian voters Wednesday to cast blank ballots in June’s run-off elections.

Vargas Llosa, son of world-famous novelist Mario Vargas Llosa, said Wednesday that he has lost confidence in “the ethical conduct” of Toledo. The two men had worked together since 1999 to prevent the unconstitutional election of Alberto Fujimori to a third presidential term.

Toledo was the victor in the first round of the vote, Apr 8, convened to elect the successor to interim President Valentín Paniagua, who took office after Fujimori was removed from office following a wave of corruption scandals.

But Toledo did not win the absolute majority of the votes necessary to claim the presidency, so will compete in a second round, tentatively scheduled for June 3, against second-place finisher Alan García, who served as president from 1985 to 1990.

Vargas Llosa says what prompted him to cut ties with Toledo was the candidate’s refusal to submit to a DNA test to determine whether the economist-turned-politician is the father of a girl named Zaría. Her mother, Lucrecia Orozco, has been engaged in a court battle for the last 13 years to prove the presidential front- runner fathered the child.

But the journalist stressed that other incidents – over time – have revealed to him that Toledo continues to behave with “duplicity and concealment.”

“We are coming out of a dictatorial and corrupt regime (Fujimori’s 10-year government) that caused serious moral damage to our society,” Vargas Llosa said, “and we cannot run the risk of electing someone we cannot trust to the presidency.”

He added that the voters could not rely on the other candidate either. García, leader of the social-democratic Aprista party, “utilised the statute of limitations mechanism to avoid responding to the courts about acts of corruption allegedly committed during his government.”

Polls indicate that nearly 30 percent of the respondents still have not decided how they will vote in June, or they are unconvinced of casting a ballot for either Toledo or García.

Toledo, of the ‘Perú Posible’ party and champion of a market economy with a social touch, currently garners 39 percent of the public’s support, compared to García’s 28 percent, which continues to grow.

In launching the campaign to convince voters to cast a blank ballot in the run-off, Vargas Llosa has the support of popular television personality and novelist Jaime Bayly. It was on Bayly’s talk show last weekend that he announced his rupture with Toledo.

On that occasion, Vargas Llosa revealed the Hungarian-US financier George Soros had given Toledo a million dollars to help in efforts to politically destabilise the Fujimori government.

Soros’ money, and 300,000 dollars donated by Peruvian television executive Baruch Ivcher, financed the massive mobilisation known as the “march of the ‘Cuatro Suyos’ (four regions, in the Quechua language),” a name intended to appeal to the large indigenous sector of the country’s population.

Toledo, himself a ‘mestizo’ (of mixed racial descent), led the march with the support of the entire political opposition in a bid to prevent Fujimori from commencing a third term last July 28.

Though the nearly 10,000 protesters were unable to reach the congressional palace or interrupt Fujimori’s swearing-in, the street violence escalated to the point that several public buildings were set ablaze, including the ‘Banco de la Nación,’ where six security guards died.

Fujimori, who last year won a third consecutive term in the presidency, was removed last November by Congress, which declared him “morally unfit.”

“I don’t have anything against Soros financing the popular mobilisation that pushed Fujimori out of power, and I never said that Toledo did not account for his spending to Soros, I simply mentioned the fact,” said Vargas Llosa.

The paternity question involving the girl Zaraí was already a well-known matter because Bayly had made it public before the first round of elections. As a result, the revelation about the previously confidential donation from Soros seems to have been the prickliest matter for the Toledo political camp.

García stated that his party had contributed with the majority of the demonstrators who had stood up to the police during the march of the ‘Cuatro Suyos’ and that he had not received a single cent. “Nor have we asked for any (money),” he said.

Lawmakers Carmen Lozada de Gamboa, a Fujimori supporter, and Rocío Huamán, who use to be part of Toledo’s parliamentary bloc, called for an investigation into the fate of the million dollars from Soros.

“He never informed us of that contribution. The demonstrators came with their own money and with the help of supporters from the interior of the country, and in Lima the mothers’ associations provided them with food,” explained Huamán, who was expelled from Toledo’s ‘Perú Posible’ in January.

Manuel Sánchez Palacios, president of the National Elections Panel, said that a legal loophole permits political parties to keep the financing of their political campaigns confidential.

Toledo has responded by accusing Vargas Llosa of being disloyal. The journalist has been “poisoned by the schemes of his intimate friend, Jaime Bayly, who has engaged in a dirty war” against his candidacy, said the former World Bank economist.

Writer Mario Vargas Llosa, also an outspoken critic of the Fujimori regime, added his voice to the criticisms against his own son, who he said “is dazed, but whole,” and a victim of Bayly’s supposed schemes.

Another of Toledo’s former advisers, Gustavo Gorriti, admitted there were personal and political discrepancies that led him to distance himself from the presidential candidate. But Gorriti condemned “Alvaro’s (Vargas Llosa) emotional irresponsibility and Bayly’s thoughtlessness.”

“A campaign to cast blank ballots will weaken the future government, whether it is held by Toledo or García,” warned Gorriti, alluding to the fact that the country is still trying to recover from the lasting negative effects of the Fujimori era.

The elections will be annulled if more than 66 percent of the voters cast blank ballots, but Bayly indicated there is little hope of achieving that kind of support for the appeal he launched jointly with Vargas Llosa.

“There is no doubt, however, that a powerful citizen manifestation of support for a third position would alert the next government, whether it is Toledo’s or García’s, that there is a strong social sector on the lookout,” Bayly said.