Latinnews Archive
Latin American Weekly Report - 31 May 1990
Enough to start comparing policies; NAMES OF FUJIMORI'S PLANNING TEAM BEGIN TO SURFACE
Peruvians now know the date of the presidential run-off elections: 10 June. There is, however, little else new in the campaign. The opinion polls continue to show Cambio 90s Alberto Fujimori in the lead, but only by 6-7 points. And Fujimori's promised economic policy manifesto still fails to materalise.
On 19 May Fujimori had promised to deliver his long-awaited policy proposals. When the press assembled to hear it, though, they were told that power cuts had prevented the printing of the 45-page document listing everything in minute detail.
Comparing proposals
They had to make do with yet another broad-brush description -- though now with enough added detail to allow some comparison with the proposals of his rival, Fredemo's Mario Vargas Llosa:
* Inflation: Fujimori proposes a gradual reduction to reach a target annual rate of 100-200% within a year. One instrument of this gradualist approach would be a six-month price freeze. (Vargas Llosa had originally promised a 10% target within the same period, but later suggestions of mopping-up the internal debt through wholesale printing of currency seemed to clash with this.)
* Exchange rate: Fujimori aims at a rate somewhere between the official MUC rate and the street-market rate (the former is worth a third of the latter). (Vargas Llosa's liberalisation is expected to take the rate above the current parallel one.)
* Import tariffs. Fujimori would retain 'selective' protection of local industry. (Vargas Llosa would drastically reduce tariffs across the board.)
* Taxation: Fujimori's candidate to the first vice-presidency, Maximo San Roman, a leader of small business organisations, proposes exempting from taxation all companies with a turnover of less than US$ 800,000 a year, while phasing out tax exemptions for companies in other sectors, and boosting fiscal revenue with more realistic tariffs and rates. His target is to raise tax revenues to 8-10% of GDP. (Vargas Llosa's target for tax revenue is 15% of GDP).
Fujimori's critics say that his proposals amount to little more than some instruments, like his proposed price freeze, have been proven unworkable.
The team
He is also criticised for having hastily put together a policy team after the first-round electoral results, with the visible presence of left-wingers.
Among these is Oscar Ugarteche, whose particular responsibility is the external debt -- who acted as an adviser to debt-negotiating commissions in Bolivia and Nicaragua. The team also includes Esteban Hynlicza, an economist who has specialised in stabilisation programmes and in that capacity has advised the World Bank in Ethiopia and Bangladesh.
The team, whatever its members' individual previous political leanings, is hardly bereft of experience -- though a serious appraisal of how that experience translates into practical proposals will have to wait until Fujimori's phantom 45-page document sees the light.
The much commented evangelical element is well represented in Fujimori's policy team. Apart from his national campaign manager Pedro Vilchez, this group includes his deputy, Pablo Correa, who owns a television production company. On the policy commissions are:
* Politics: Victor Arroyo, once editor of the evangelical magazine Vision Mundial, a sociologist and senator-elect.
* Education: Guillermo Yoshikawa Torres, the Methodist pastor who rallied the evangelical churches to Fujimori's support with a celebrated open letter (WR-90-16).
* Transport: Oscar Cruzado Huby, elected deputy for El Callao and an active Baptist -- also president of the Callao traders' association and a former union leader.
The visible head of the evangelical contingent is the candidate to the second vice-presidency, Carlos Garcia. The weekly magazine Caretas has reported an alleged power struggle within Fujimori's Cambio 90, with the evangelicals fighting a rear-guard action to retain influence over policy, against two other faction:
* That of the technocrats linked to Fujimori when he was rector of the Universidad Agraria La Molina, reputedly headed by Victor Paredes (an engineer with post-graduate studies in Japan).
* That of the small industrialists, reputedly headed by Edwin San Roman, brother of the candidate to the first vice-presidency.
This reading does not quite fit the actual composition of the policy team, to which Fujimori has managed to attract experts of left-wing extraction as well as seasoned national bureaucrats.
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