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Peru's Garcia gets chance to atone for past sins

Posted on: Sunday, 4 June 2006, 22:31 CDT

By Robin Emmott

LIMA, Peru (Reuters) - Peru's Alan Garcia, once reviled for creating an economic disaster during his 1985-1990 presidency, won a chance for atonement when he was elected on Sunday on promises to reduce poverty and improve already record economic growth.

A lawyer and persuasive orator from one of Latin America's oldest political parties, Garcia returns to office two decades after his first term sparked hyperinflation and food shortages. Yet he won mainly because voters feared his more radical rival Ollanta Humala.

"I'm not the lesser of two evils. I'm the vote that counts," Garcia, of the center-left social-democrat APRA party, said before he voted on Sunday. He was responding to voters who said they could not stomach a victory for ex-army commander Humala.

Garcia's supporters argue the former leader has learned from the mistakes of his 1985-1990 government and has shown great tenacity in coming back from nine years in self-imposed exile and a narrow loss in the 2001 presidential election.

Underscoring Garcia's transformation, he recently befriended a disabled man he rudely kicked out of his way at a rally two years ago, a turnaround not lost on voters bruised by Garcia's first term.

"We now face the prospect of kissing the feet of the man who kicked us down," said Mario Ghibellini, a columnist for El Comercio newspaper's current affairs magazine Somos.

Married to Pilar Nores, the daughter of a wealthy Argentine businessman, Garcia won over voters too young to remember his first government.

"I don't believe in giving up," said Garcia, 57, sporting sideburns decidedly grayer than those of the 35-year-old elected in 1985 and dubbed Peru's John F. Kennedy.

Garcia's resurgence is astonishing for a man whose first term was marked by a refusal to pay foreign debt and rising attacks by Shining Path Maoist rebels. But it is not due just to his salsa and reggaeton dancing at his rallies.

Garcia promises generous loans to poor farmers and higher taxes on miners. Yet his economic policy looks conservative alongside that of Humala, who promises to put Peru's economy in state hands to benefit the half of Peruvians who are poor.

THE CHAVEZ EFFECT

Vocal support for Humala from Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, a self-proclaimed socialist revolutionary, has allowed Garcia to portray himself as a moderate defending Peru from meddling. Chavez has heckled him as a "thief."

"Every time Chavez speaks ... it helps our campaign," said Garcia's chief economic aide, Enrique Cornejo.

Bolivia's surprise energy nationalization on May 1 worries many Peruvian businessmen who say Peru, which is enjoying an unprecedented run of economic growth since 2002, needs foreign investment and cannot afford to mirror such policies.

Peru's economy is set to notch a fifth straight year of growth, an unprecedented feat in the country's boom-and-bust history. But many Peruvians are sick of the pro-business policies that have failed to trickle down to areas where peasant farmers live in impoverished hamlets unchanged for centuries.

Garcia had eggs hurled at him on the campaign and some Peruvians say his proposals to force telephone companies to cut their rates, reduce gasoline prices and grant generous loans to farmers show he is still the same populist who was one of Latin America's most flamboyant leaders in the late 1980s.

"He's not a good man who cares about the poor, he's a snake charmer and we're fools to believe anything he says," said Marisa Huamani, a maid whose family was left destitute by Garcia's first government and who said she would spoil her voting card on Sunday.

Source: REUTERS

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