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Pastimes : Let's Talk About Our Feelings!!! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Michael M who wrote (80223)	5/30/2000 7:45:00 AM
From: Dayuhan	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 108807

I don't consider myself sufficiently well informed to come up with an opinion on what we ought to do about Peru, if anything, but these are some of the elements running through my head during the opinion-forming process. Fujimori has certainly served up a rather difficult question. First, by running at all: the constitution poses a 2-term limit. Fujimori and his people argue that since his first term was under the previous constitution, it didn't count. When the tribunal responsible for deciding such questions disagreed, 3 of its members were summarily removed and not replaced, leaving the tribunal incapable of reaching a quorum to decide on the issue. A prominent media figure who questioned these actions publicly was forced to leave the country under threat of arrest. None of this is behaviour that gives much faith in Peruvian democracy. I don't doubt at all that the election was rigged, probably fatally so, though the total of Toledo's vote and the defaced "boycott" votes suggests that Toledo might actually have won had he decided not to boycott. We will never know, of course. The whole thing poses no good alternatives for the US and other outside powers. If we call the election a done deal and tell Toledo and his supporters to wait 'til next time, we come off as sanctioning a crude attempt to stage an election not as a means of ascertaining the will of the people, but as a way to maintain legitimacy in the eyes of the meddlesome gringos that hold the foreign aid/loan purse strings, without seriously risking a loss of power (a fairly typical Latin American incumbent's view of the electoral process). This of course provides fantastic propaganda fodder for leftists throughout Latin America. The alternative, of course, is to support Toledo's call for a new election, which would be expensive and cumbersome and might very easily be a repeat of the flaws of the first one. Items worth considering. Fujimori has been a generally effective President: the leftist insurgencies have dropped to a sideshow, inflation has been contained, and the economy has grown. On the downside, he has shown draconian tendencies, the coercive powers of the State have been used rather liberally against even peaceful opponents of his regime, and both unemployment and poverty remain widespread. Toledo, for his part, may be acting like a rebel, but he is anything but a leftist rebel. His campaign centered around maintaining market reforms and strong resistance to the rebels, but on strengthening the democratic process and on creating jobs. As a rebel, he would be far preferable to many other potential rebels. Both candidates proceed from populist positions, but Toledo, an indigenous indian and a former shoeshine boy who ended up with an economics degree from Stanford, may have a slight edge in the dramatic story department. So, some questions: Is even an effective president justified in twisting the rules to maintain power for an unprecedented - and possibly illegal - third term? If the rules are bent to pull the rug out from under a serious candidate, is that candidate justified in taking the political struggle outside the electoral process? Can election fraud be justified or excused on the grounds that it is a regional tradition? What steps on the part of outside countries are appropriate in redressing a perceived failure of the democratic mechanism? I wouldn't suggest forming an opinion based on the content of any single news organ, but a good start for a quick Peru briefing, if you follow the support links, is at: news.bbc.co.uk