A rchive Date
[ 11-06-2000 ]
Category
[ International Relations ]
sub-Categoy
[ Peru ]
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[We're picking on Peru, but not the real villains
By ERIC MARGOLIS
Contributing Foreign Editor
June 11, 2000
LOS ANGELES - Canada and the U.S. blasted Peru at last week's Organization of American States meeting in Windsor for running a "deeply flawed" election in which President Alberto Fujimori won a third term. The North American media have also excoriated Fujimori, an agronomist of Japanese descent who came from nowhere to first win Peru's presidency in 1990, for being too hard-line and for rewriting the constitution so he could run for a third term.
Fujimori, called "El Chino" (the Chinaman) by Peruvians, accomplished the seemingly impossible feat of bringing relative peace to Peru after 20 years of savage internal warfare. He crushed Latin America's two most vicious insurgencies, the Cuban-supported Marxist Tupac Amaru, and the more dangerous Sendero Luminoso, or Shining Path, an Andean version of Cambodia's genocidal Khmer Rouge. "El Chino" repressed the cocaine trade and restored Peru's economy from near death to robust health.
Peru's transformation was stunning.
While interviewing Fujimori's predecessor, President Alan Garcia, in the national palace in Lima, I asked about Peru's deteriorating security situation. "I can assure you," Garcia said, "we have security under control." Moments later, two mortar rounds fired by Shining Path rebels exploded in front of the palace. Garcia grinned at me sheepishly and shrugged. His term ended under a cloud of corruption charges, leaving Peru on the verge of economic and political collapse.
President Fujimori roared in like the legendary Japanese Divine Wind. He banged heads, unleashed security forces against rebels and criminals, tore down the old socialist state and brought in the free market. Fed up with obstructionism from the entrenched, corrupt congress and courts, Fujimori purged the government of deadwood in a "self-coup."
Venezuela's controversial new revolutionary leader, President Hugo Chavez, has followed Fujimori's example.
Fujimori is impatient with democratic niceties, and has become an elected strongman within a weak democratic system. But Fujimori was still elected by a majority of voters in two fair elections and a third less-than-perfect one. Still, Peru is light years ahead of where it was under previous inept socialist regimes and military juntas. Ordinary Peruvians have benefited enormously from Fujimori's tenure.
Half still favour him. The other half back his opponent, Alejandro Toledo, who charged the Fujimori camp with vote rigging, and petulantly boycotted the election. Toledo, who is of Indian blood, holds moderately leftish positions. Consequently, he has become a favourite of the Clinton administration, Canada's Liberal government and the liberal North American media.
While Canada and the U.S. were excoriating Fujimori, they said little about Mexico, a far larger, more important Latin nation that holds national elections on July 2. Fujimori may be high-handed and paternalistic, but compared to Mexico's eternally ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), he looks like a Swiss democrat.
Mexico has been a one-party state for over 80 years. The PRI, the world's longest ruling party, much resembles the old Soviet Communist party: oligarchic, secretive, obsessed with control and self-enrichment. Mexico's presidents are chosen by the PRI's politbureau. PRI has been exceptionally clever in assuring its power and survival.
Like Canada's Liberals, the PRI long ago realized if it put half the Mexican work force on the government payroll, with lush benefits and cushy pensions, it would win every election. Who would vote to derail their gravy train? So much of Mexico's stultified economy remains under government control, a vast source of political patronage and cash.
Behind a thin facade of fake democratic institutions, the PRI rigged elections and bribed, bought off, hired, or cowed into obedience the media and all opponents. The few courageous reformers who challenged the PRI by demanding free elections and honest government were murdered. Today, the PRI is steeped at every level in corruption, and deeply influenced by drug money. Like the Soviet Communist party in the Brezhnev years, it is dying of internal rot.
Honest elections?
PRI supporters insist Gorbachev-style reforms in recent years have opened and democratized the party, and will produce honest elections next month. Maybe. Mexico's left-wing Democratic Revolutionary Party and conservative National Action Party (PAN) are making a lot of noise, but they will likely, as usual, split the vote, leaving the PRI victorious. Even in the unlikely event one wins a majority, the PRI's political machine will be sure to rig the vote, as is done every election.
The United States and Canada steadfastly refuse to admit the obvious: that their neighbour, Mexico, is a corrupt one-party state with sham elections. Good relations with oil-rich Mexico, with 97 million people, are more important than the truth. Far-away Peru, with only 25 million people, is a safer target for the gringos' moral wrath.
A true popular revolution will one day come to Mexico, as it did to Iran, where another rapacious elite was bleeding the country mercilessly, but not in the near future. Washington wants the status quo in Mexico maintained, no matter how corrupt and influenced by narco-criminals it may be.
Not to be outdone by Washington in political hypocrisy, Canada sternly rebuked Peru for running less than totally perfect elections - while saying absolutely nothing about Cuba, a 1950s-vintage Stalinist dictatorship that rejects all democratic norms, has zero free elections - and still gets foreign aid and political support from the ever-doting socialist government in Ottawa.
Eric can be reached by e-mail at margolis@foreigncorrespondent.com.
 World Fact Book (CIA
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