As Peru Prepares to Vote, Many Call Election a Sham

LIMA, Peru — Is Peru a democracy?

The short answer is yes, according to Jorge Santistevan, Peru's widely respected human rights ombudsman.

But many Peruvians disagree. Especially presidential candidates who accuse the nation's intelligence service of hounding them with egg-throwing goon squads, lurid tabloid newspaper attacks and mysterious power outages that kill microphones during speeches.

And even Santistevan, who heads one of the few institutions that is considered independent here, acknowledges that the close race for Sunday's presidential election has displayed the authoritarian and shadowy methods of President Alberto Fujimori's 10-year-old regime.

"It would be wrong to say that this is a reign of terror like the ones that once existed in Eastern Europe, but a situation of fear is developing," Santistevan said in a recent interview. "The central problem is that our democratic institutions do not work the way the constitution says they should. . . . We have weak institutions. And that is reflected today, more than ever, by the electoral process."

As Fujimori strives to avoid a runoff election in his bid for an unprecedented third term, international observers criticize the race as unfair and undemocratic.

Whether you see him as a strong-arm democrat or a subtle dictator, Fujimori's power permeates Peru. Domestic and foreign critics say his intelligence service controls the armed forces, the courts and other institutions. The president has created a 21st century model of an authoritarian regime, they say, that makes his rivals fearful and raises concerns about democracy in the troubled Andean region.

"They have succeeded in creating something that had not existed in Latin America in the past 50 years," said presidential candidate Alejandro Toledo. "The history of Latin America has been a pendulum between coups and fragile democracies. With a great quantity of sophisticated Machiavellianism, they have created a facade of democracy."

Toledo accuses the government of dirty tricks ranging from anonymous death threats he has received to the electrical outages that plague his campaign rallies in the provinces. He and other candidates have taken to traveling with portable generators.

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