Lima, Peru – Presidential frontrunner Ollanta Humala appealed to undecided voters for support so he can win Sunday’s elections and carry out what he pledged would be a transformation of Peru.
Some 10,000 supporters turned out to hear the nationalist-populist former army colonel at a rally in Lima’s Plaza of the Naval Heroes.
With only a couple of days remaining before the general elections, the undecided vote is at around 25 percent, according to the polls.
The latest surveys gave Humala 31 percent of the vote to 26 percent for conservative Lourdes Flores. Former President Alan Garcia had 23 percent.
If no candidate obtains an outright majority on Sunday, the two top vote-getters would go to a run-off. Surveys show that Humala, who is seen by some as a Peruvian version of Venezuela’s controversial Hugo Chavez – also a populist former colonel – would be hard-pressed to win a second round.
Humala said in interviews published earlier this week by two Buenos Aires dailies that he would propose the formation of “a great family” with the leftist governments of Venezuela, Argentina, Brazil and Bolivia.
He said he wanted to form an alliance with the governments of Evo Morales in Bolivia, Chavez in Venezuela, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva in Brazil and Nestor Kirchner in Argentina.
Humala said he needed the support of undecided voters not just for his candidacy but for the “entire nationalist family,” referring to the congressional candidates of his Peruvian Nationalist Party, or UPP, on which rest the hopes for “the transformation of the country.”
The frontrunner for the April 9 election was alluding to his plan to hold a constitutional assembly that would draft a new charter to replace the Peruvian Constitution approved in 1993 during the administration of former President Alberto Fujimori.
Humala led a failed coup with his brother, Antauro, on Oct. 29, 2000, against Fujimori’s administration.
The former colonel had 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.
His brother, Antauro, is now in jail after staging another unsuccessful coup on Jan. 1, 2005, in the Andean city of Andahuaylas.
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.
“I need the votes of the people for the Congress because we have to start the transformation on July 28 and change the history of the country,” Humala said, referring to the date on which the Andean nation’s next president will be inaugurated.
Flores, meanwhile, held a rally in Ica, some 350 kilometers (217 miles) from Lima, where she criticized Humala for saying that if she won, she would barely last a year in office.
“Now he starts to talk about fraud, about coups and conspiracies, which is what those who know they are going to lose always talk about,” Flores said.
Humala told the Argentine newspapers that if Flores won the election, “the same thing will happen as with other Latin American presidents who were removed by the people.” “I believe it would be very difficult for Lourdes Flores to manage to make it through a year in office.”
The leader of the National Unity party said Humala’s plan “does not have a future and is the product of improvisation and violence,” and would lead to “chaos, crisis and unemployment.”
Former President Alan Garcia traveled to the provinces of Juliaca and Puno, on the border with Bolivia, where he promised to create a free-trade zone and promote alpaca raising.
Humala was to close his campaign Thursday in the southern city of Arequipa, one of his bastions of support, while Flores and Garcia planned to wrap up their campaigns in Lima.
