Ayacucho, Peru – The former army colonel and failed coup plotter who hopes the votes of his rural compatriots will propel him to Peru’s highest office denies he ever summarily executed suspected subversives during his years fighting Maoist rebels and says growers of coca leaf cannot be persecuted.
In an interview with EFE, Ollanta Humala questioned polls that show him drawing 27 percent support and running second in the run-up to the April 9 elections.
Conservative candidate Lourdes Flores is in first place, with 33 percent support, according to the polls.
The nationalist leader said real polls should be conducted in the streets and in rural areas, not just in the cities.
During a campaign swing through Ayacucho province, Humala said that since he formed his party eight months ago, his detractors have not ceased in their efforts to derail his quest for the presidency.
He defended himself against allegations, which are being investigated by the Attorney General’s Office, that he committed human rights violations when he commanded a military base in the jungle region of Madre Mia.
Humala was chief of the Madre Mia military base from 1992 to 1993, when the Maoist Shining Path insurgency had escalated its attacks.
He is accused of playing a role in the “disappearance” of several suspected leftists whose relatives reported them abducted by military personnel. Since their bodies were never found, it is presumed they were summarily executed and their corpses disposed of in a way intended to preclude discovery.
“Let’s not lose track of the situation, we’re in a campaign, and this (the rights-abuse accusations) emerged as soon as Ollanta took the top spot (in the polls) at the national level. We have shattered the status quo of the traditional right,” Humala said, referring to the time when he led in the polls for a few days before the allegations were made.
“I have not violated the human rights of any individual, I’m a career military officer, with 24 years of service, I fought with honor,” Humala said.
The presidential candidate said the allegations were part of a plot to “destroy the candidacy of someone they call an ‘outsider’ and ‘anti-establishment,'” and he accused the government and the other mainstream parties of being involved.
Humala said the election campaign was “disgusting” and Peruvian politics were a “sewer.”
Regarding his ideology, Humala said he admired writer and politician Jose Carlos Mariategui and historian Jorge Basadre, as well as Victor Raul Haya de la Torre, a nationalist who championed the rights of Indians and fought for economic and social reforms in Peru.
Former French President Charles de Gaulle and India’s Mohandas Ghandi are other figures admired by the 42-year-old former officer.
The candidate of the Peruvian Nationalist Party, or UPP, recalled that, as a colonel, he led a failed coup with his brother on Oct. 29, 2000, against the “corrupt regime of Alberto Fujimori.”
Humala has recently appeared to be distancing himself somewhat from the UPP, which in the past has called for setting up a government along the lines of the Inca empire, abolishing all forms of currency, nationalizing foreign companies, legalizing all coca farming and jailing homosexuals, among other policies.
About half of Peru’s population of 26 million is Amerindian.
His brother, Antauro, is now in jail after leading a failed uprising a year ago.
Humala said he now believed that “the path is peace, reconciliation and the alternatives offered by the democratic system.”
After being granted amnesty, Ollanta was sent as a military attache to France and South Korea, while Antauro staged another unsuccessful coup on Jan. 1, 2005, in the Andean city of Andahuaylas that ended up with him being jailed.
“No one, not even I, is above the law,” Humala said in response to a question about whether he would pardon his brother if elected to the presidency.
Antauro belongs to the Etnocacerista movement founded by his father Isaac, a group that takes its name from field marshall and former President Andres Avelino Caceres, a hero of Peru’s losing 1879-1883 War of the Pacific against Chile.
The movement fosters xenophobia against Chile, the United States and Israel as part of a platform that also includes indigenous demands and Inca myths.
Ollanta has been distancing himself from the movement, a position that he said has caused frictions within his family.
Humala said he had no plans to nationalize companies but backed a state takeover of natural resources and a review of lease payments and royalty rates paid by multinational energy companies.
Agriculture would be a priority of his administration, which would defend the right of farmers to grow coca because “coca is part of our cultural identity,” Humala said.
He said the Agriculture Ministry, not the Interior Ministry, would deal with the problem of excess coca that ends up in the hands of cocaine producers.
“We have to find a profitable use for the surplus and industrialization, that’s where we need to work with the countries that consume cocaine, with the European Union and the United States, so they can help us find a profitable market,” Humala said.
He acknowledged that as long as drug trafficking existed, there would be security problems, including from remnants of the Shining Path.
The remaining guerrillas “do not threaten the security of the state,” Humala said, noting that only some 200 rebels were still in Peru’s central jungles.
Humala wrapped up a campaign swing Monday in Ayacucho, one of the areas worst hit by the 1980-2000 Shining Path insurgency, and the candidate promised compensation for victims of the conflict.
