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Peru holds elections with all eyes on nationalist candidate(EFE Ingles Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge)Lima, Apr 9 (EFE).- Peru is holding general elections Sunday, with all eyes on a nationalist presidential candidate who went from being a political unknown less than a year ago to frontrunner in several recent polls. The presidential race features 20 candidates, while more than 2,500 candidates from 23 parties are vying for 120 seats in Congress that are up for grabs. The three leading presidential candidates are nationalist Ollanta Humala, the candidate of the Peruvian Nationalist Party (UPP), conservative Lourdes Flores, of the National Unity party, and former President Alan Garcia, the leader of the American Populist Revolutionary Party (APRA). The attention of the media and public, however, has been focused on Humala throughout the campaign. Observers say that Humala's strong showing in the public opinion polls was the result of generalized deep disappointment with the performance in government of mainstream politicians and parties in Peru, where the majority of the population has not shared in the economic gains made in recent years. Many Peruvians and some political analysts compare Humala's quick rise to that of Alberto Fujimori 16 years ago. Fujimori, who is in jail in Chile while the courts weigh an extradition request by Peru on 10 counts of corruption and two of human rights violations, defeated, to everyone's surprise, famous writer Mario Vargas Llosa at the polls in the 1990 presidential election. The main difference, though, is that Humala was already well known in Peru before launching his candidacy, due to his military background - which included a failed coup attempt against Fujimori - and for belonging to a politically controversial family that has cast a shadow on his campaign. Humala led a failed coup with his brother, Antauro, on Oct. 29, 2000, against Fujimori, shortly before the president, hounded by corruption scandals, fled to Japan. After being granted amnesty in 2001, Ollanta Humala was sent as a military attache to France and South Korea. While in South Korea, he began building the political machine that he hoped would take him to the presidency. Antauro, however, staged another unsuccessful coup on Jan. 1, 2005, against current President Alejandro Toledo in the Andean city of Andahuaylas that ended up with him being jailed after four police officers died in the unsuccessful uprising. Humala has recently appeared to be distancing himself somewhat from the UPP, which in the past has called for setting up a government along the lines of the Inca empire, abolishing all forms of currency, nationalizing foreign companies, legalizing all coca farming and jailing homosexuals, among other policies. His father, Isaac, founded the Etnocacerista movement, a group that takes its name from field marshall and former President Andres Avelino Caceres, a hero of Peru's losing 1879-1883 War of the Pacific against Chile. The movement fosters xenophobia against Chile, the United States and Israel as part of a platform that also includes indigenous demands and Inca myths. Humala joined the army in 1980 and had risen to the rank of captain by the time of his assignment, in 1991, to a forward base in a jungle region where the government had declared a state of emergency to battle the Maoist-inspired Shining Path rebels. During his campaign, Humala has had to defend himself against allegations, which are being investigated by the Attorney General's Office, that he committed human rights violations when he commanded a military base in the jungle region of Madre Mia. Humala was commander of the Madre Mia military base from 1992 to 1993, when the Maoist Shining Path insurgency had escalated its attacks. He also took part in Peru's brief 1995 border war with Ecuador. The allegations, however, have not prevented him from garnering support in Peru for his proposals. They include vows to bring about "the transformation of the country" via a constitutional assembly that would draft a new charter to replace the Peruvian Constitution approved in 1993 during Fujimori's administration. The established parties all view a possible victory by Humala with trepidation, believing that Peru could end up with an authoritarian system patterned after the Venezuela of Hugo Chavez, another former army colonel and failed coup plotter who was first elected in late 1998 on a platform that decried the corruption and inefficacy of traditional parties and politicians. The one sure thing is that Humala's nationalist rhetoric has boosted his standing at the national level and especially in the Andean region of the country, where poverty and marginalization plague the mostly Indian population. About half of Peru's population of 26 million is Amerindian. More than 16.4 million Peruvians are eligible to vote in Sunday's election, including, for the first time, active military and police personnel, although many members of the security forces will be on duty and unable to cast ballots. Some 94,000 police officers and 70,000 soldiers have been deployed across the Andean nation to provide security at polling places, especially in areas where drug traffickers and remnants of the Shining Path guerrilla group operate. International observers, most of them from the Organization of American States, are monitoring the elections. The polls are scheduled to close at 4:00 p.m. (2100 GMT). EFE wat/hv |