Pubdate: Sun, 02 Apr 2006
Source: Houston Chronicle (TX)
Copyright: 2006 Houston Chronicle Publishing Company Division, Hearst Newspaper
Contact:  http://www.chron.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/198
Author: John Otis, South America Bureau
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/topics/Peru
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/people/Evo+Morales
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/topics/Bolivia
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/topics/coca
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/coke.htm (Cocaine)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/decrim.htm (Decrim/Legalization)

CROWDS TREAT NEOPHYTE LIKE ROCK STAR

Front-Runner Could Be the Latest Unorthodox South American
Leader

In most professions, reaching the top requires a stellar track record
of experience and achievement. But in Latin American politics, a
barren resume can serve as a ticket to the presidential palace.

The latest example may turn out to be Ollanta Humala, the front-runner
heading into Peru's April 9 presidential election who is waging his
first political campaign.

A former lieutenant colonel, Humala led a failed military uprising in
2000 but was otherwise unknown to most Peruvians until just a few
months ago. Yet Humala paints his inexperience as an endowment.

He argues that because he never before dipped his toe into politics,
he remains untainted by failure and by the corruption scandals
surrounding numerous Peruvian officials, including outgoing President
Alejandro Toledo.

Shortly before addressing a huge rally, which ended with adoring
supporters carrying the 43-year-old Humala on their shoulders though
the streets of this jungle river town, the candidate tried to explain
in an interview why crowds are suddenly treating him like the fifth
Beatle.

"The people want a new message and a new messenger. They want a
political renovation," said the soft-spoken Humala, who sports
close-cropped hair and an athletic body that could still fit into his
army uniform.

Humala, who transforms himself into an angry partisan on the hustings,
aims to tread the trail blazed by several unorthodox candidates before
him.

By presenting themselves as high-minded reformers intent on shaking up
their countries' ruling orders, these outsiders have won several
presidential elections. Their qualifications and ideologies vary, but
they generally lean to the left and have brought an end to years of
rule by conservative, pro-American leaders.

In Bolivia, Evo Morales, an Aymara Indian and a grower of coca, the
raw material for cocaine, won the presidency by a landslide in
December. In Brazil, union activist Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who
grew up in abject poverty, was elected president in 2002. Venezuelans
and Ecuadoreans opted for ex-military officers who launched their
political careers by leading coup attempts -- Hugo Chavez and Lucio
Gutierrez.

Part of their appeal stems from frustration with traditional
politicians, many of whom hailed from the upper class, studied in the
United States and prescribed free-market policies to cure the region's
ills. But under their leadership, economic growth across the region
has slowed to a trickle, and nearly 43 percent of Latin Americans now
live in poverty.

As a result, voters no longer seem so impressed by veteran politicians
who know all the right people and wear their degrees from elite
universities on their sleeves.

"It doesn't matter if you studied at Harvard. What you really need is
to be in touch with the people," said Fredy Vilca, 48, a teacher in
Bolivia's capital of La Paz.

A supporter of President Morales, Vilca added: "That's why we are
happy to have a peasant as our president. He will rule for the majority."

The hitch is that expectations can be overwhelming. Many voters
believe that candidates like Morales, who carry clean slates into
office, will work miracles.

"But solutions are based on policies and ideas," said Diego Garcia
Sayan, a human rights activist who served briefly as Toledo's foreign
minister. "In government, you try to lay one or two bricks. And then
the next administration comes in and tries to lay the next brick."

Instead of building things up, many newcomers have spent years
maligning government and face a steep learning curve when they take
power.

The scenario sometimes seems like a south-of-the-border remake of The
Candidate, the classic 1972 film in which Robert Redford portrays an
idealistic outsider running for the U.S. Senate. Following his upset
victory, the stunned senator-elect surveys his staff and says: "What
do we do now?"

In the days following Morales' inauguration in La Paz, one tenderfoot
lawmaker ushered a reporter into what he thought was an empty office
in the ornate congress building, only to realize that it was the restroom.

Elsewhere, greenhorn leaders seem to have lost their
way.

In Ecuador, for instance, Gutierrez abandoned his left-wing allies and
was forced to resign last year amid massive street protests. Da Silva,
a candidate for re-election this year in Brazil, has been distracted
by corruption scandals within his party, and his ballyhooed
anti-poverty programs have stalled.

Although Venezuela's oil-based economy is booming and Chavez is
favored to win another six-year term in December, the country has
become so polarized that he has faced down a coup attempt, general
strikes and an election boycott since taking office in 1999.

"People are disillusioned, but it's not like political outsiders can
resolve their problems," said Lima political analyst Carlos Ivan
Degregori. "It's like saying, 'I'm not a doctor and never have been,
but let me operate on your son.' "

Humala is such a neophyte that he makes Bolivia's Morales, who served
two terms in Congress before tackling the presidency in January, look
like a seasoned veteran. Yet Peruvian voters have often fallen for the
freshest face.

Back in 1990, Alberto Fujimori, a son of Japanese immigrants and then
a little-known dean of an agricultural university in Lima, shocked the
establishment by winning the presidency in his first campaign. Eleven
years later, Toledo, a former shoeshine boy who went on to become a
World Bank consultant, was elected to the top job with no governing
experience.

Both Fujimori and Toledo allied themselves with Washington, embraced
free-market policies that have since fallen out of favor among many
Peruvians, and were tarnished by corruption scandals. Toledo, whose
job approval rating at one point sunk to single digits in the polls,
was prohibited by law from running for re-election.

At rallies, Humala likes to tell a joke about a shameless candidate
who promises impoverished voters a school, a hospital and a bridge.
When told that no river runs through the region, the politician vows
to build one.

"Most candidates offer everything but then forget about you when they
reach power," said Luis Chinchay, a father of five who sells bread and
candy in a tiny Indian village near Pucallpa, one of Humala's campaign
stops. "But Ollanta has been an army commander. He would bring order
to Peru."

Polls give Humala about a 5-point lead over Lourdes Flores, a
center-right former legislator, with ex-President Alan Garcia running
third. If none of the 21 candidates receives more than 50 percent of
the vote, the top two finishers meet in a runoff in May.

Although Humala once commanded legions of soldiers, he strikes a
humble pose on the campaign trail. He carries his luggage through
airports, wears jeans and work boots, and starts his rallies by
singing the national anthem and paying tribute to Peru's fallen.

"Soldiers are the sons of poor people, and I have worked with them for
24 years. That's why I have a bond with the people," Humala said. "I
have lived in poor villages without water or electricity, and I was
fine. I don't think other politicians know how to do that."

The military, he said, taught him not just to give orders but to lead
by example.

For the moment, though, Humala appears to be following Morales' lead
in neighboring Bolivia.

Like Morales, Humala pledges to crack down on drug trafficking but
talks of legalizing the cultivation of coca and using the plant to
make legal products such as tea. He wants to hold a special assembly
to rewrite Peru's constitution, similar to another Morales proposal.
And like the Bolivian leader, Humala insists on more state control
over the economy, including the renegotiation of contracts for
foreign-owned oil companies as a means to extract more royalties.

Although Peru's economy has expanded by nearly 5 percent annually
under Toledo, most of the growth has come in the mining and energy
sectors and has generated few jobs. Two-thirds of Peruvians labor in
the informal economy, and half scrape by on less than $2 a day.

"Reality tells me that there is desperation in Peru," Humala says.
"We've had economic growth, but no development."

Still, Humala remains an enigma to many.

When he was searching for a running mate this year, he called a Lima
political analyst out of the blue and invited her to join his ticket.
But when she asked him to outline his ideas, Humala dropped her from
consideration.

"Not even Humala's current running mate knows who he is," said Martin
Tanaka of the Institute for Peruvian Studies, who related the account
about the analyst.

Part of the confusion stems from the fact that several members of
Humala's family, whose views are more radical than his, have jumped
into politics.

Humala's father, a well-known Marxist-Leninist lawyer, recently called
on the government to grant amnesty to the jailed leader of the Shining
Path, an idea that most Peruvians abhor because the fanatical Maoist
guerrilla group terrorized the population in the 1980s and '90s.

One of Humala's brothers, Ulises, is also running for president as an
ultranationalist, but he remains far back in the pack. Another
brother, a former army major named Antauro, presents himself as a
candidate for Congress even though he remains imprisoned for leading a
military uprising last year in which four policemen were killed.

Mystery even shrouds Humala's military career, which began at officer
candidate school in 1982.

As his campaign took off this year, Humala was accused by people in
the jungle town of Madre Mia -- where he commanded an army base during
the Shining Path rebellion -- of ordering the disappearances of their
relatives.

Humala denied the allegations, which remain under investigation, and
voters seem to have shrugged off the controversy.

Many talk of another episode.

Along with about 60 troops, including his brother Antauro, Humala
staged a rebellion in October 2000 to protest the military command's
support of then-President Fujimori, who had won a third term in a
fraud-tainted election. The uprising was quickly put down and Humala
went into hiding. But soon afterward, Fujimori resigned in disgrace,
and the new government appointed Humala military attache to Paris.

The revolt jump-started Humala's political career. But if he wins the
upcoming presidential election, it's unclear how he'll steer the ship
of state.

Humala lacks the support of a traditional political party and may have
to govern with an opposition-controlled congress. That could open the
door to vote-buying and other shenanigans in order to get things done.

A frustrated President Humala, many of his critics think, would then
slide back into the command-and-control ways of the only profession he
truly knows -- the military.
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MAP posted-by: Richard Lake