By RICK VECCHIO Associated Press Writer © 2006 The Associated Press
LIMA, Peru — When Alan Garcia's presidency ended 16 years ago, Peru was in shambles, with 3,000 percent inflation, guerrilla violence and rampant corruption. Now he's poised to return as president.
One force driving this remarkable comeback is his exchange of insults with Hugo Chavez, which is playing well with voters fearful of the Venezuelan president's left-wing radicalism and alliance with Cuba's Fidel Castro.
It's a striking rearrangement of the political landscape. During his first presidency, Garcia might have passed for a proto-Chavez, railing against imperialists, proclaiming a new socialist deal for the poor and balking at paying off Peru's huge foreign debt.
Now it's retired army Lt. Col. Ollanta Humala, Garcia's opponent in the June 4 presidential runoff, who is identified with Chavez, while Garcia has acknowledged past mistakes and claims he has been reborn as a moderate leftist _ pragmatic, market-friendly and not hostile to Washington.
It's not the first example of how Latin America's recent leftward surge is being dampened by a fear that Chavez, with his anti-American rhetoric and friendship with Castro, is taking things too far.
Just as in Mexico's presidential race, where a conservative used the Chavez factor to capture the lead over a left-wing former favorite, so in Peru, the Venezuelan has inadvertently hurt a leftist candidate by warmly endorsing him.
Humala won the first round of the election, with Garcia barely edging past a conservative rival to make the runoff. But a May 3-5 survey of 2,000 voters by Apoyo, Peru's leading polling firm, put Garcia ahead 57-43 with a margin of error of two percentage points.
A May 8 sounding by Datum Internacional showed the same result after surveying 1,127 people. Its margin of error was three percentage points.
Garcia portrays himself as Peru's best defense against what Venezuelans call "Chavismo," and has put Humala on the defensive by depicting him as Chavez's ideological subordinate, alongside Bolivia's new socialist president, Evo Morales.
Elected as one of Latin America's youngest presidents at the age of 35, Garcia turned Peru into an international pariah by draining the nation's reserves for populist spending, defiantly declaring a near moratorium on foreign debt payments _ and encouraging other developing nations to do the same.
He lived in exile for nearly nine years until corruption charges against him expired, returned to Peru in January 2001 and just five months later narrowly lost a runoff vote to Alejandro Toledo, whose term ends July 28.
An artful rhetorician, Garcia has directed his barbs at Chavez and his oil power, and provoked an exchange of insults that included such outbursts as Chavez calling Garcia "Corrupt, shameless, a thief," and Garcia retorting: "He must have drunk a lot of Venezuelan rum."
Both nations recalled their ambassadors.
When Humala tried to defend Chavez, "Alan benefited greatly because Humala was left looking like a pawn _ Chavez's pawn," said Fernando Rospigliosi, a former Peruvian interior minister and staunch Garcia critic.
Rospigliosi still considers Garcia a "snake charmer" hypnotizing an "amnesiac Peruvian electorate," but also expresses grudging admiration: "As a politician, he is extraordinary."
At 56, Garcia can still seduce the masses with dazzling oratory, promising secure jobs and better living conditions and education for Peruvians desperately seeking change.
Unemployment runs high, but if he wins, Garcia will at least inherit a far healthier economy than the one he left behind in 1990. Growth was 6.67 percent last year on the back of booming exports, the fiscal deficit is well under control, foreign reserves are solid and inflation remains tame.
Meanwhile, Peruvians see Chavez's fingerprints all over neighboring Bolivia's nationalization of its gas and oil industries, and are reminded of Peru's own widespread expropriations during the 1968-75 military dictatorship of Gen. Juan Velasco _ a man Humala has extolled for leading "perhaps the last nationalist patriotic government" in Peru.
Francisco Sanchez, a mechanical engineer, said he'll vote for Garcia as "the lesser of two evils." Sanchez, 42, voted in the first round for Lourdes Flores, the conservative, pro-business ex-congresswoman who came third.
"I'm going to choose Alan Garcia because at least I know how bad he is," said Sanchez. "It seems to me Ollanta Humala has very extremist tendencies."
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