Latinnews Archive
Latin American Weekly Report - 17 February 1984
POLITICS: AP and PPC form alliance; BUT NO AGREEMENT YET ON COMMON CANDIDATE
Government politicians have started talks aimed at converting the present power-sharing agreement between Accion Popular and Partido Popular Cristiano into an electoral alliance with a common candidate in the upcoming presidential elections set for 31 March 1985. According to a PPC spokesman, an alliance would prevent the election from becoming a contest between the Marxist Izquierda Unida (IU) coalition and the centre-right opposition party, APRA.
PPC political secretary and former justice minister (1980-81) Felipe Osterling told us that talks between President Belaunde and PPC leader Luis Bedoya 'have begun' and that the PPC is insisting that the common candidate be Bedoya, PPC party founder who served briefly as minister of justice during Belaunde's first presidency, and Lima mayor in the late 1960s. 'Everything is negotiable except Bedoya', says Osterling.
A recently retired cabinet minister also told us that Belaunde himself is pushing the alliance. The president apparently shares the prevailing interpretation that last November's municipal election results mean that neither AP nor PPC has a chance of winning the one third plus one vote to ensure qualification for the second round of voting, likely to take place in late May or early June between the two candidates receiving the most votes in March. APRA received 33% of the vote in November, while IU won 30%. PA and PPC polled 17% and 14% respectively.
It is unlikely, however, that any agreement on a common candidate will be reached before AP's June national party congress, or PPC's congress scheduled for July. Separate presidential candidates will be chosen, and parliamentary lists drawn up during these congresses, making a decision before the end of the year improbable.
* AP candidates should step aside: Belaunde's biggest problem will be to convince AP presidential hopefuls former prime minister and finance minister Manuel Ulloa, and party general secretary and Camajarca senator Javier Alva Orlandini, to step aside to make way for a Bedoya candidacy. According to Osterling, only a PPC candidate can keep IU out of the second round, and successfully challenge APRA. He argues that while the PPC's share of the Peruvian electorate has risen from 10% in the 1980 presidential election to 14.5% last November, due to the 'inappropriate management' of the economy and the current recession, an AP candidate, even with PPC support, could not beat APRA general secretary Alan Garcia.
Osterling claims that the PPC will present a 'distinct option' in the 1985 elections. He says PPC will 'reactivate' the agricultural and industrial sectors by increasing the availability of cheap credit, raising import duty on products which compete with Peruvian manufacturing, and institute 'structural changes', such as permitting the privatisation and the sale of land now part of Peru's state-owned companies, and changes in strike and labour stability legislation. These structural changes have not been pushed because of the 'excess timidity' of AP politicians who dominate the congress, according to Osterling.
However, AP timidity in regard to such highly unpopular measures is not likely to disappear in an election year. Ulloa and Alva have both been busy repudiating finance minister Carlos Rodriguez Pastor's IMF 'stabilisation' policies and calling for measures to foment production, especially in the industrial sector. This represents a 180-degree about face for Ulloa, who promoted the IMF agreement in 1982 as minister of finance. In addition, both Alva and Ulloa are insisting publicly that an AP candidate must head any electoral alliance with the PPC.
Meanwhile, Alan Garcia has been assured the APRA candidacy after his only opponent, Javier Valle Riestra, dropped out of the running in late January (RA-84-01). Valle Riestra abandoned his short-lived opposition to Garcia after the APRA executive committee turned down a requestto postpone the 12 February party vote to determine the presidential candidate until May, in order to permit him to organise his campaign.
* 'An understanding with the right': Confirmation of Garcia, strongly pushed by political committee president Luis Alberto Sanchez and other party conservatives, means that APRA is likely to continue the 34-year-old secretary general's strategy of presenting the party as the 'democratic' and 'responsible' opposition on the left in an attempt to live down APRA's sectarian image and Marxist origin by appealing to independent voters, especially among the young. Valle Riestra has called this strategy 'coming to an understanding with the right', and warns that this 'historical tendency' of APRA will prevent the party from winning more than a third of the vote in 1985.
Valle Riestra's analysis is more or less shared by at least part of the lU leadership, which is undertaking an ambitious municipal programme that they hope will prove to the electorate -- if not the right and the army -- that the Marxist left is capable of governing. 'We have to demonstrate two kinds of behaviour', says Lima councillor and IU executive committee member Oscar Ugarte. 'We have to continue opposition (to the AP/PPC administration) and at the same time demonstrate we can govern municipal ruling on the treasury for most of its income.
Ugarte also told us that the IU presidential candidate, to be chosen in a congress taking place 'before September', 'must and will be Alfonso Barrantes', IU's president and mayor of Lima. Under current municipal law, Barrantes would have to resign as mayor in order to run for president of the republic. A new law which would permit Barrantes to continue in office while campaigning is being held up by the government majority in the senate.
The new law authorises the municipality to levy a sales tax which Barrantes says would help cover the projected US$20m deficit in the city's US$50m 1984 budget. The Lima mayor chided President Belaunde in a televised speech last week which was to give final approval to a city-wide property revaluation which could double property tax income. He also reported that President Belaunde has promised the counterpart funds and government guarantee necessary for the drawdown of a US$150m World Bank loan to the city which have been held up since the IU victory in November. The loan, negotiated by mayor AP Mayor Orrego, is to pay for improvements in refuse collection and dumping, system, as well as a new wholesale market for agricultural products consumed in Lima.
* IU's new health plan: In addition, the IU is organising an 'emergency health and feeding plan', which includes a three-month campaign to prevent infant diarrhea and dehydration, an infant vaccination campaign and a tuberculosis prevention and treatment programme to start in August. There will also be a distribution of 1m glasses of milk daily beginning in April to children under five, and the organisation of 200 soup kitchens (comedores populares).
Ugarte says that although the municipal budget will pay for some of the plan, most of the financing was secured by Barrantes in a trip to Europe last December.
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