World

Round Two In Peru

January 30, 2001 / 12:09 PM EST / AP

Alejandro Toledo finished first in Peru's presidential election, but the U.S.-trained economist and self-styled "Indian with a cause" failed to gain a majority needed to avoid a runoff, according to preliminary results.

He will apparently face former President Alan Garcia, a left-leaning populist, in a second round in late May or early June.

According to initial results, Toledo received 36.3 percent of the vote, to lead the field of eight candidates in Sunday's election.

Garcia, 51, widely discredited among Peruvians until he began a stunning political comeback three months ago, received 26.2 percent. About 60 percent of ballots were officially tallied at midday Monday. A runoff likely will be held in late May.

Toledo, 55, who boycotted last year's fraudulent contest against disgraced former President Alberto Fujimori, is still a favorite to win in a runoff vote.

"Today, Peru was the winner. We have obtained a great victory," Toledo told hundreds of supporters at a downtown Lima hotel. "We have won in votes and in democracy, even if we did not achieve the 51 percent."

But the showing by Garcia in Sunday's election was seen as a stunning political comeback for the left-leaning firebrand who ended his five-year term in 1990 amid rampant corruption, 7,650 percent inflation and surging guerrilla violence.

Transparencia, a widely respected independent election watchdog group, had similar forecasts based on a sample of ballot tallies.

Nearly 15 million Peruvians were registered to vote for president as well as a new 120-member Congress.

Garcia, a golden-tongued orator who was once dubbed the John Kennedy of Latin America, left Peru in economic chaos and an international pariah after he drained the nation's reserves for social spending and unilaterally limited foreign debt payments.

He returned in January after nearly nine years in exile, following a ruling by Peru's Supreme Court that the statute of limitations on corruption charges had run out.

Garcia always denied the allegations and attributed them to political persecution by Fujimori, who fled Peru in November amid mounting corruption scandals involving Vladimiro Montesinos, his intelligence chief.

Fujimori now lives in self-imposed exile in Japan, his ancestral homeland. He did not vote, the Peruvian Embassy in Tokyo said Monday. Nine polling booths were set up in Japan, where about 13,000 eligible Peruvian voters stay.

Painting himself as elder statesman who has matured and put behind his youthful leftist ideas, Garcia said earlier that regardless of who wins the runoff he was "convinced that things are going to improve because we are leaving behind a dictatorship."

Many Peruvians, enchanted with his message of job creation, lower utility bills and easy credit, are ready to forgive his first-term performance.

"I voted for Alan because I don't believe he is going to go in and make the same mistakes," said Carlos Alvarez, a 49-year-old tailor.

The elction was Peru's first since the ouster of Fujimori, who ruled with an iron fist for more than a decade.

A year ago, Fujimori trampled constitutional restrictions and won a third straight five-year term in elections marred by fraud and dirty tricks.

Peru was plunged into political turmoil as Peruvians supporting Toledo, who finished second to Fujimori, took to the streets accusing the autocratic leader of trying to rig the vote.

The crisis was averted three days later when election officials announced Fujimori had fallen just shy of the absolute majority. But Toledo boycotted the second round.

Since then, the release of videos secretly taped by Montesinos have revealed how the spy chief or his emissaries bribed or otherwise influenced election officials, lawmakers and media executives to ensure Fujimori's win.

Toledo, who has a doctorate from Stanford University and has been a visiting scholar at Harvard, is a "cholo," the Peruvian term for a person of mixed Indian and white blood. He has capitalized on his rise from shoeshine boy to an economist with the World Bank and on the resentment toward the European-descended elite that has long dominated politics in Peru.

Indians make up 45 percent of Peru's 26 million inhabitants and 37 percent are of mixed Indian and white blood. No Indian or mestizo has been freely elected president in Peru's history although several have come to power through military coups.

"Toledo doesn't belong to the ruling class. He has come from the lower class," said Vladimiro Molina, 26, a computer systems student. "He can say, 'At least I have lived like the common people have.' For that reason, I think he can offer something different than the other candidates."