PERU: Highlands Region Turns Its Back on Garcia’s Second Chance

By Ángel Páez Reprint | | Print |

Ángel Páez

LIMA, Jun 5 2006 (IPS) - Social democratic former president Alan García won Sunday’s runoff election in Peru with a 10.9 point lead. However, his rival, nationalist former army officer Ollanta Humala, clearly carried the day in the country’s impoverished Andean region.

With 77 percent of the votes tallied, García took 55 percent against Humala’s 44 percent, according to the national electoral office (ONPE).

“In keeping with our commitment to democracy, we want to publicly state that we recognise the results issued by the ONPE and we greet the forces that have competed with us, represented by Mr. Alan García,” Humala told journalists several hours after the official preliminary results were announced.

García’s main support base was in Lima and Peru’s leading coastal cities, while backing for retired lieutenant-colonel Humala was strongest in largely indigenous highlands villages and towns.

García won a second term on Sunday, nearly 16 years after his 1985-1990 administration marked by economic chaos, soaring unemployment and runaway inflation, after it kicked off with bold initial moves that included the nationalisation of the banking system and a decision to pay off the country’s debt to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) at a reduced rate.

Nevertheless, Sunday’s election did not represent outright defeat for Humala, taking into account the fact that he has only been in politics for a year and that he won 14 of the country’s 25 regions.

This outcome presents García with major challenges in governing. Besides comprising a majority in over half of the country, Humala’s supporters won 45 seats in Congress in the April elections, compared to the 36 garnered by García’s American Popular Revolutionary Alliance (APRA), which was founded 82 years ago.

Humala, who got involved in politics in mid-2005, when he created the Peruvian Nationalist Party (PNP) and launched his campaign based on proposed in-depth reforms of a democratic system that excludes the poor majority, has shaken up traditional Peruvian politics in a surprisingly short time.

In the capital, where 30.8 percent of Peruvian voters are concentrated, García took nearly 63 percent of the vote, against Humala’s 37 percent.

But the former president’s victory was also based on major coastal cities like Callao, Tumbes, La Libertad, Piura, Lambayeque, Ancash and Ica – areas where agro exports grew under the outgoing administration of Alejandro Toledo (who took office in 2001), leading to improved living standards.

Humala, on the other hand, performed well in regions afflicted by poverty and areas that suffered the brunt of the guerrilla war waged by the Maoist Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path) and the resulting 1980-2000 “dirty war” by the armed forces against insurgents and civilians suspected of supporting them.

In the southern region of Ayacucho, the birthplace of Sendero and the site of the worst military massacres against the civilian population, Humala won the support of an overwhelming 79.5 percent of voters.

The anti-establishment candidate was also victorious in two other southern regions, Huancavelica and Apurímac, where the indigenous majority has been steeped in poverty for centuries – and where he captured 71.4 and 70.3 percent of the vote, respectively.

And in Arequipa and Cuzco, southern bastions of anti-government struggles over the past century, Humala defeated García by taking 63.9 and 68.9 percent of the vote, respectively.

Humala also won close to 71 percent of the vote in the central region of Huanuco, the site of the village of Madre Mía, where the retired army officer has faced accusations of gross human rights violations against civilians committed while he commanded a counterinsurgency post in the early 1990s.

The people living in Peru’s poverty-stricken Andean highlands region thus sent García a clear message.

The election result also revealed that Peru is split between those who want to see a continuity of free-market neoliberal policies that have led to improved incomes for certain sectors of the population, thanks to average annual gross domestic product growth of five percent, and those who are calling for radical changes to a model that marginalises a majority of the population.

In a speech delivered to his followers at his campaign headquarters shortly before acknowledging his defeat, Humala merely stated that he had triumphed in 60 percent of the regions.

“This is a historic social and political victory,” he said. “It is a victory for everyone, because hope has triumphed over fear.”

“Today marks the start of the great transformation of the country,” he said. “In just one year, we have been able to form a nationalist movement that has changed the map of the country. We have awakened the consciousness of the Peruvian people.”

Humala added that he would set up a Popular Nationalist Front throughout the country to capitalise on the support he earned in the elections and join forces with the aim of “changing the neoliberal economic model that is impoverishing the people of Peru.”

García, meanwhile, gave a victory speech at APRA headquarters to thousands of his supporters. On a stage adorned with banners reading “Peru Won”, he said he was grateful for the support he was given in Lima, “which on other occasions has been evasive with the candidates from our party.”

But he immediately recognised that he did not gain the backing of voters in the Andean region, promising them that “you will not remain in neglect or abandonment, because I am determined to put an end to imbalances and inequalities.”

He acknowledged that over half of the country’s regions had turned their backs on him, which clearly meant people there had “profound grievances and demands.”

García, who was defeated by Toledo by a narrow margin in 2001, said “this is not a sad day, nor is it a day of easy victory and celebration, but of Christian and political contrition, because I know we have not been given a blank check.”

“The state is not booty or a trophy” he told his followers.

He ended by “extending his hand” to Humala to tackle the country’s serious problems.