2006 Peruvian general election

Electoral system

Candidates

Presidential tickets

Congress

Andean Parliament

Campaign

Main presidential candidates

• Lourdes Flores is the leader of the conservative, right-wing National Unity coalition. She is a former Congresswoman and came in third place in the 2001 presidential election. She was often targeted as the candidate of the rich and was accused by opponents of not caring about the poor. Her running mate was Arturo Woodman, a well-known entrepreneur, who also led the organization of the 2004 Copa América and the 2005 U-17 World Championship.
• Alan García is the leader of left-leaning Peruvian Aprista Party and was President of Peru from 1985 to 1990. His presidency was marked by hyperinflation and an economic crisis, as well as widespread terrorist activities and isolation from the international community; however, he came in second place in the 2001 presidential election, losing in the runoff against Alejandro Toledo. Critics often pointed to his administration as a failure to be repeated if he got elected.
• Ollanta Humala is the leader of the left-wing Peruvian Nationalist Party, but ran under the Union for Peru banner. He is a Lieutenant Colonel and led an uprising in October 2000 against then President Alberto Fujimori, for which he was pardoned by Congress following Fujimori's fall in November. He spoke of the "refoundation" of the country in a "Second Republic" and called for the rewriting of the Constitution by a Constituent Assembly. Opponents criticized his lack of political experience, his perceived authoritarianism and populism. He was constantly associated during the campaign with his brothers Ulises and Antauro, though their etnocacerista movement is more radical than his nationalist movement. Ulises also ran for President in this election with Avanza País; Antauro, who participated in the 2000 insurrection, is in prison, following his own brief rebellion in January 2005 against President Alejandro Toledo, but also ran for Congress.

  Other candidates

• Martha Chávez was the candidate of the pro-Fujimori Alliance for the Future. She is currently a Congresswoman and was the first female President of Congress. A staunch defender of the former president, she was suspended from Congress in 2002 after corruption accusations, but was reinstated in 2005. Vice-presidential candidate Santiago Fujimori is Alberto's younger brother. As with all fujimoristas, she was criticized for defending an administration that is seen as corrupt and authoritarian.
• Valentín Paniagua was the leader of the Center Front, a coalition of centrist parties formed for this election. He was President of Congress before becoming the interim President of Peru, following the collapse of Fujimori's administration. Running mate Alberto Andrade was mayor of Lima from 1996 to 2002.
• Natale Amprimo, Javier Diez Canseco and Luis Guerrero are current Members of Congress. Guerrero was also mayor of Cajamarca.
• Alberto Borea is a former Deputy and Senator. In 1992, he participated in a failed coup against Fujimori, led by Jaime Salinas Sedó, whose son was National Justice's candidate in this election, Jaime Salinas.
• Humberto Lay Sun is an evangelical pastor and was a member of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, established to study the atrocities committed in the 1980s and 1990s. Running mate Máximo San Román was Fujimori's Vice-President, but split with him after the 1992 self-coup.
• Susana Villarán was Minister of Women's Promotion and Social Development during Paniagua's tenure.
• Alberto Fujimori's candidacy was rejected after a ban by Congress forbidding him to hold office until 2011 was upheld.
• Ruling party Peru Possible and ally Independent Moralizing Front withdrew their candidates. PP's candidate Rafael Belaúnde was not a party member and clashed with the party's core over the congressional candidate list, which included some people he did not approve of. FIM's leader Fernando Olivera, quit to run for Congress, realizing his slim chances in the presidential race.

  Presidential debate

Highlights

• Important issues during the campaign included economic policy, unemployment, education, healthcare, drug trafficking, terrorist activities, the exploitation of the Camisea natural gas reserves, the management of ports by foreign companies, a maritime border dispute with Chile, birth control and abortion, and renewal of Congress.
• In January 2006, Ollanta Humala attended a ceremony held in honor of then President-Elect of Bolivia, Evo Morales, by Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, who publicly endorsed Humala. Chávez also called Lourdes Flores "the candidate of the Peruvian oligarchy". These events prompted a row between Chávez and the Peruvian government, who accused him of interfering in Peru's internal affairs. Humala later met with Brazilian and Argentine presidents Lula da Silva and Néstor Kirchner. The former had also invited Flores and García, but they declined.
• In late April, after Chávez announced that Venezuela would leave the Andean Community unless Colombia, Ecuador and Peru abandoned their plans for Free Trade Agreements with the United States, Alan García criticized him, arguing that this was equivalent to blackmail, and that it was very hypocritical, considering the amounts of oil exports from Venezuela to the US. Chávez responded by calling García "corrupt" and a "thief", and the new candidate of Peru's rich and of the US, following Flores' defeat. He also endorsed Humala again and threatened to withdraw his ambassador to Peru if García won. After accusations by García and the Peruvian government of interference in the election by the Venezuelan president, Toledo and García were called "caimans from the same well" and the former was labelled as US President Bush's "puppet" and "office boy" by Chávez. This led to the mutual withdrawal of ambassadors. García had been the notable exception to criticism of Humala's January meeting with Chávez, in an apparent move to avoid confrontation with the latter, who could be a leftist ally in the region during his potential presidency.
• On May 25, a violent clash between supporters of Ollanta Humala and Alan García in Cusco left five injured people, including two wounded by gunshot.
• National Unity was accused of buying off candidates to pull out of the race, including Fernando Olivera, who did withdraw, and Jaime Salinas. Olivera's FIM party later showed TV advertisements directly attacking Alan García, and was ordered to stop by the National Jury of Elections. The ruling was not obeyed and Jorge Del Castillo, Secretary General of Peruvian Aprista Party and Member of Congress, showed documents allegedly proving a secret pact between FIM and Lourdes Flores' Unidad Nacional party accounting for the attacks on García. In response, Olivera sued him for forging the documents.
• A section of National Unity accused the Peruvian Aprista Party of electoral fraud, following the narrow victory of Alan García over Lourdes Flores in the race for the second runoff spot.
• On April 7, just two days before the First Round, José Cardó Guarderas and Ciro Gálvez dropped from the presidential race and announced their support for Lourdes Flores' candidacy and their opposition to Ollanta Humala's. Only Cardó presented his official resignation to the National Jury of Elections, but his votes were still counted officially. The day before, Ricardo Wong, who had withdrawn his candidacy before and later retracted, announced that he dropped the race in favor of Alan García. Given the proximity of the election, there were no changes to the ballot.
• In the second round campaigning for the Peruvian elections Diego Maradona the Argentinian soccer star, announced that he would visit Peru on May 4 to play a friendly game with former Peruvian soccer players. Maradona has also expressed his support for Humala's campaign and is a personal friend of Cuban President Fidel Castro and Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez. In response to the announcement that Maradona was coming to Peru to support Humala the candidate for the APRA party Alan García was quoted as saying "Maradona comes by order from his friends in Cuba and Venezuela and even so Ollanta Humala will not manage to pull a goal on us". In the end, Maradona did not make any political statements after all.
• Ollanta Humala was accused of torturing and killing peasants under the nom de guerre "Capitán Carlos" when he was the commander of a military base in the jungle from 1992 to 1993. National Unity was accused of buying off witnesses to testify against him. His brother Antauro confirmed that he used that name and said that he acted "according to the rules of the Army".
• In December 2005, Peru reached a deal with the United States on a Free Trade Agreement between the two countries. Some candidates, such as Ollanta Humala, opposed the agreement, others like Lourdes Flores supported it, and still others like Alan García approved parts of it and advocated revising it. The Toledo administration announced that it would be signed after the First Round in order to avoid affecting the election's outcome . The agreement was finally signed on April 12 in Washington, D.C., and ratified by Peru's Congress on June 28, but must be ratified by the U.S. Congress before coming into force.
• Isaac Humala, father of candidates Ollanta and Ulises, said that he would free Shining Path and MRTA leaders Abimael Guzmán and Víctor Polay, since he considered that terrorist movements no longer represent a threat to Peruvian society. This came after a letter was signed by several public figures, including Ulises and fellow candidates Javier Diez Canseco and Alberto Moreno, demanding a fair trial for Polay. Most candidates rushed to condemn Isaac Humala's comments, including Ollanta and even Ulises, whose candidacy had been openly supported by his father. Around the same time, Elena Humala, the candidates' mother, claimed that homosexuals and rapists should be shot , which apparently prompted Ollanta to ask his parents to stop making public statements.
• In an April 4 interview with Argentine newspaper Página/12, Ollanta Humala claimed that, if Lourdes Flores were elected, she would be overthrown in less than a year. Given his past uprising, this was interpreted as a coup threat, leading opponents to accuse him again of having no respect for democracy.
• Peru's only living Roman Catholic Cardinal, Juan Luis Cipriani exhorted the electorate not to fall for "messianic" candidates, in one of several tacit references to Ollanta Humala.
• Minister of Justice Alejandro Tudela Chipotea announced that Antauro and Ollanta Humala would be sued for complicity with Vladimiro Montesinos. While their October 2001 uprising was publicized as an insurrection against the Fujimori administration, there have been accusations of it being staged in order to create a distraction so that the fugitive Montesinos could flee the country, which he did the same day aboard a yacht. César Mojovich, a former National Police Commissioner of Toquepala, revealed this in a TV show, and apparently there are records of calls from Montesinos to the Humala brothers' military base just hours before the uprising. In mid-May 2006, Montesinos himself claimed that Humala's uprising was indeed a farce, though his statements were interpreted by some as an attempt to affect the outcome of the runoff election.
• Union for Peru's vice-presidential candidate Carlos Torres Caro was accused of sexual harassment by two of his former students, and of electoral fraud cover-up in 1995. The presidential candidate for Project Country, Marco Antonio Arrunátegui, who withdrew from the race, had a pending judicial process for sexual exploitation of minors.
• The National Electoral Jury admitted the failure of an Electoral Ethical Pact between the parties, given the widespread personal attacks between the candidates. Asociación Civil Transparencia, an unaffiliated citizen group, also lamented the overall tone of the campaign.
• OAS and European Parliament observers denied the possibility of an electoral fraud, which was suggested by Ollanta Humala, who accused the government of favoring Lourdes Flores in the First Round. The OAS mission sent personnel to emergency zones in Peru, where remnants of Shining Path were known to operate. SL called for a boycott of the election.
• The election was initially going to use two separate ballots, by decision of the National Office of Electoral Processes: one for the Presidential election, the other for the Congressional and Andean Parliament elections. After the formal protest of several parties, the National Jury of Elections ruled that the ballots had to be merged into one.
• Members of the Armed Forces and the National Police were able to vote for the first time in 180 years. Up to 50% were eligible to vote, with an estimated 35% actually voting.

  Opinion polls

Results

President

First round

Second round

Congress

Andean Parliament