Peru "There Was a Triumph Here"

By William R. Doerner

The black bulletproof Mercedes limousine pulled up at the crowded downtown plaza as the final United Left rally before the balloting in Lima's tight mayoral race was getting under way. Peering through the dark tinted windshield, the man behind the wheel discreetly -- and expertly -- gauged the size and mood of the crowd. Then he made a quick decision: the candidate for mayor put up by his ruling center-left Popular American Revolutionary Alliance (A.P.R.A.) needed help. The limo wheeled around and headed back to the presidential palace half a mile away. Bucking a tradition that has kept Peruvian chief executives aloof from local elections, President Alan Garcia Perez, 37, thereupon ordered microphones and a TV camera installed on a balcony so that he could "spontaneously" welcome a crowd of 50,000 A.P.R.A. supporters at the palace two nights later.

His canny political meddling proved to be the turning point in an election that Garcia managed to transform into a referendum on his first 16 months in office. Such tactics paid off handsomely. Not only did the President's handpicked candidate, an unknown named Jorge del Castillo, win the Lima mayoralty, the second highest elected office in Peru. When the votes were counted up and down the Andean nation, Garcia's A.P.R.A. had unofficially won in nine of Peru's ten largest cities, a gain of four. Combined with the party's control of both houses of the national legislature, the sweep placed the charismatic, youthful President at the zenith of his power. Said Garcia: "There was a popular triumph here."

The month-long campaign was marred by scattered acts of violence. Guerrillas of the Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path), the fanatical Maoist revolutionary group that has terrorized the countryside since 1980, shot and killed an A.P.R.A. candidate for city council in Huancayo, 122 miles east of Lima. To the southeast, near the city of Ayacucho, Sendero insurgents threatened to cut off the fingers of campesinos found with stamp marks on their hands showing they had voted. But the anti-A.P.R.A. violence did not approach the level that it was feared would result after government troops killed at least 260 prisoners last June during riots of Sendero inmates at three prisons near Lima.

The election results represented a vote of confidence for Garcia's handling of the Peruvian economy. At his inauguration in July 1985, Garcia vowed that he would allot no more than 10% of export earnings for repayment of the country's $14.2 billion foreign debt. The strategy led a year later to a cutoff of loans from the International Monetary Fund and the accumulation of $630 million in unpaid interest owed to U.S. banks. But it has also allowed Garcia to reduce inflation from 184% just before he took office to 59% currently and to increase wages by an average of about 7% over increases in living costs. Fueled by new consumer purchasing power, the economy is growing by an estimated 5.5% annually, its best performance in more than a decade. Although some U.S. lenders wonder whether the growth can last, most of the big foreign banks seem resigned to giving Garcia more time in the hope that continued economic progress will eventually permit the government to start attacking the debt problem.

Last week's elections effectively shattered any pretense of unity among the opposition United Left coalition. Even so, Garcia took little pleasure in engineering the defeat of its leader, Incumbent Lima Mayor Alfonso Barrantes Lingan, a Marxist with whom he has nonetheless closely cooperated. After the election, Garcia made it clear that his admiration for Barrantes remains strong, saying nothing could break the "identity of convictions" they share. Political observers in Lima do not rule out the possibility that the pragmatic Barrantes, who ran unsuccessfully against Garcia for the presidency last year, might even drift toward A.P.R.A. Having lost twice to Garcia, who under the current constitution will not be allowed to succeed himself when his term of office expires in 1990, Barrantes just may decide that A.P.R.A. victories have become a Peruvian political habit.

With reporting by Gavin Scott/Lima