The message finally penetrated. After three days of fidgeting, the Peruvian government’s National Electoral Process Office (ONPE)–hardly regarded as a model of independence–announced that Fujimori, with 49.84 percent of the votes counted so far, could not achieve the full majority needed for a first-round victory. Now he’s bracing for a runoff contest, to be held in late May or early June, against his leading challenger, a former shoeshine boy named Alejandro Toledo who drew 40.85 percent by the ONPE count. (The boy eventually graduated from the streets and went on to earn a Stanford Ph.D. in economics, but he boasts of his humble origins and his Inca ancestry.) “The democratic forces have triumphed!” Toledo told a rally in downtown Lima after the count was announced. “Our people have won despite all the games and tricks!” A few hours later, though, he admitted to reporters that the crucial struggle is still ahead. “I may be ugly,” he said, “but I’m no fool.”
And Fujimori is no quitter. Whether battling the nightmarish Shining Path or a recalcitrant Congress, he has always prevailed–even if it required such extreme measures as his autogolpe, the presidential seizure of dictatorial power in 1992. Throughout his quest for an unprecedented third term, Fujimori has acted with his customary sense of titanium resolve. He persuaded Congress he was exempt from a constitutional provision that forbids such re-election bids. Three members of a constitutional tribunal dared try to stop him. He had them thrown out of office.
That was only the beginning. Since the campaign began, Fujimori’s opponents have accused the president’s newly formed Peru 2000 alliance of carrying out widespread voter intimidation and dirty tricks. The president’s supporters insist those charges are nothing but exaggerations and lies; they contend that the complainers are dupes in a U.S. government plot to seize control over Peru’s political system. Senior U.S. officials reply that the last thing Washington wants is to destabilize Peru. Colombia and Venezuela have already contributed more than enough political unrest to the region, and Fujimori himself has always been a strong U.S. ally in the war against cocaine.
But the avalanche of reported abuses could not be ignored. In February the country’s leading daily, El Comercio, reported that someone in Fujimori’s camp had falsified more than a million signatures on petitions to get Peru 2000 on the ballot. So exactly who broke which laws? Two months after the story ran, no one knows. The official watchdog agency, the National Elections Board, has not investigated the report.
Fujimori accuses his critics of sowing fear for selfish ends. Even so, he predicts he will win the runoff with no need for any alleged dirty tricks. His first-round showing was nothing to sneeze at “after 10 years governing a country with complicated problems,” he told the Associated Press. “I’m satisfied.” Toledo, a free-market centrist with scant political experience, professes to be more than satisfied: “We survived… in enormously adverse conditions, David against Goliath.” Of the country’s nine TV channels, only a single cable station seriously covered his campaign. Now, Toledo says, all he wants is the basic elements of a fair fight–“electoral agencies with credibility, access to the media, a public debate with Fujimori, the participation of international observers and international pollsters.”
That’s a tall order these days in Peru–but not impossible. The OAS pushed Fujimori for an honest vote because its members devoutly wish to safeguard their own democracies. They shrugged when members of Fujimori’s administration appealed for their support against Washington’s “interference.” “Today the OAS members see [formal sanctions] as a deterrent to antidemocratic forces in their own countries,” says a senior U.S. official. That kind of self-interest can be a powerful force–among voters as well as diplomats. Rosa Alvarez, a car importer in Lima, says she had no choice but to join the anti-Fujimori street protests. “I had to come out,” she says. “I don’t want my grandchildren to scold me for doing nothing, asking, ‘Where were you?’” The question now is whether Peru’s voters can assert their presence so forcefully on Election Day.
