Fujimori's 1990 upset victory in Peru: Electoral rules, contingencies, and adaptive strategies

Comparative Politics

Volumn 28, Issue 3, 1996, Pages 348-354

  Schmidt, Gregory D ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 24944535030     PISSN: 00104159     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.2307/422210     Document Type: Article

References (122)

1. District magnitude refers to the number of seats that the voters of an electoral district fill in a given election. While the 1979 constitution was in effect, Peru's departments served as electoral districts for most lower house races, and the senate was elected in a single national district. District also refers to the lowest-level political jurisdiction in Peru and is used in this article as a unit of analysis in describing population and voting patterns in Lima.
2. For a more detailed analysis of the 1990 election and its implications for Peruvian democracy, see Gregory D. Schmidt, Understanding the Fujimori Tsunami: Electoral Rules and Partisan Competition in the 1990 Peruvian Elections (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, forthcoming).
3. This line of argument has been most fully developed by Maxwell A. Cameron, Democracy and Authoritarianism in Peru: Political Coalitions and Social Change (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1994), on which this section draws.
4. The revolutionary block was made up of the Frente Obrero, Campesino, Estudiantil, y Popular (FOCEP), the Partido Unificado Mariateguista (PUM), and the Unión de Izquierda Revolucionaria (UNIR). The reformist block included the Partido Comunista Revolucionario (PCR), the Partido Socialista Revolucionario (PSR), the Movimiento Socialista No Partidario, and other independents. In the center of the IU were the pro-Moscow Partido Comunista Peruano (PCP) and two major independent movements, Acción Político Socialista (APS) and Movimiento de Afirmación Socialista (MAS).
5. This paragraph is based on Cameron, pp. 19-22.
6. By 1989 real private sector wages in Lima were only 60 percent of their already depressed 1980 level, real private sector salaries had fallen to only half of their low 1980 value, and real government remuneration was little more than a third of that attained in 1981. In contrast, informal sector incomes actually improved overall during the 1980s. See Richard Webb and Graciela Fernández Baca de Valdez, Perú en Números 1991 (Lima: Cuánto S.A., 1991), pp. 813, 835, 836.
7. The "valid vote" refers to the total vote less spoiled and blank ballots.
8. These percentages of valid votes cast by each type of district are averages for the presidential and senate races in 1990, calculated from disaggregated electoral returns provided by the Jurado Nacional de Elecciones.
9. Cameron, pp. 50-51, 110.
10. Ibid., pp. 41, 43-47.
11. Ibid., pp. 47-48; and Carol Graham, Peru's APRA: Parties, Politics, and the Elusive Quest for Democracy (Boulder. Lynne Rienner, 1992), pp. 169-199.
12. Webb and Fernández Baca de Valdez., pp. 305, 740.
13. Unpublished survey data provided by Apoyo S.A., Peru's best known public opinion firm, which has a good reputation for reliability. Public opinion data in this article are from this source, unless otherwise noted.
14. Cameron, pp. 25-29.
15. For discussion of the founding of the ML and the novelist's very unusual personal life, literary career, and political evolution, see Jeff Daeschner, La guerra del fin de la democracia: Mario Vargas Llosa versus Alberto Fujimori (Lima: Peru Reporting, 1993), esp. pp. 13-64, 72-88;
16. Ricardo A. Setti, Diálogo con Vargas Llosa (Buenos Aires: Intermundo, 1989);
17. Mario Vargas Llosa, El pez en el agua: Memorias (Barcelona: Editorial Seix Barral, 1993).
18. See Hernando de Soto The Other Path: The Invisible Revolution in the Third World (New York: Harper & Row, 1989).
19. Daeschner, pp. 61, 68, 214.
20. Alfredo Torres Guzmán, Perfil del elector (Lima: Editorial Apoyo, 1989), pp. 57-58.
21. For Vargas Llosa's account of the formation of FREDEMO, see Vargas Llosa, El pez en el agua, pp. 79-93.
22. Peru's majority runoff format, discussed later in this article, made the resignation threat much more credible because Vargas Llosa could probably place at least second in the general election without the support of the established conservative parties. This point is made in Matthew Soberg Shugart and John M. Carey, Presidents and Assemblies: Constitutional Design and Electoral Dynamics (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992), p. 215. The novelist himself claims that he really intended to quit politics but was dissuaded from doing so by his wife.
23. See Mario Vargas Llosa, "A Fish Out of Water," Granta, 36 (Summer 1991), 43-48,
24. El pez en el agua, pp. 93-99. For an innovative game-theoretic analysis of the resignation episode, see Cameron, ch. 4.
25. As exemplified by an early FREDEMO television advertisement that portrayed a public employee as a defecating monkey. The author saw this spot and the other campaign advertisements discussed in this article on Peruvian television.
26. For a lucid game-theoretic analysis of the Byzantine politics that led to the split, see Cameron, ch. 5.
27. For accounts of Fujimori's life, political evolution, and the C-90 party that he created, see Luis Jochamowitz, Ciudadano Fujimori: La Construcción de Un Político, 2nd ed. (Lima: PEISA, 1994); and Daeschner, esp. pp. 88-91, 94-98, 126-128, 151-155, 159-164.
28. For example, see Peter Katel and Michael L. Smith, "The Triumph of an Outsider," Newsweek, Latin American ed., June 25, 1990, pp. 14-17;
29. Eugene Robinson, "Novelist Vargas Llosa Takes Narrow Lead in Peruvian Elections," The Washington Post, April 9, 1990, pp. A11, A14;
30. Linda Robinson, "Who is Fujimori Anyway?," U.S. News and World Report, April 23, 1990, p. 49.
31. Analyses that stress the shock explanation include Jorge G. Castañeda, "The Fall of a Star," Newsweek, Latin American ed., June 25, 1990, p. 4.;
32. "Manuel D'Ornellas: 'Saltos al vacío,' " Resumen Semanal, April 6-11, 1990, p. 4;
33. "Painless in Peru," The Journal of Commerce, Apr. 11, 1990, p. 8a;
34. Eugene Robinson, "Writer Faces Stiff Fight in Peru Runoff," The Washington Post, Apr. 10, 1990, pp. A1, A20.
35. See especially Carlos Iván Degregori, "El aprendiz de brujo y el curandero chino: Etnicidad, modemidad y ciudanía," in Instituto de Estudios Peruanos (IEP), Demonios y redentores en el nuevo Perú: Una tragedia en dos vueltas (Lima: IEP, 1991), pp. 69-136.
36. See also James Brooke, "Another Chapter Due in the Strange Story of Peru's Election," The New York Times, Apr. 15, 1990, p. E2;
37. Alma Guillermoprieto, "Letter from Lima," The New Yorker, Oct. 29, 1990, pp. 116-129;
38. Jeffrey Klaiber, "Fujimori: Race and Religion in Peru," America, 15 (September 1990), 133-135.
39. Vargas Llosa, El pez en el agua, esp. pp. 85, 321. Analyses of the election that employ more than one line of argument include Daeschner;
40. Romeo Grompone, "Fujimori: Razones y desconciertos," in IEP, Demonios y redentores en el nuevo Perú, pp. 19-67;
41. Fernando Rospigliosi, "Las elecciones peruanas de 1990," paper presented at the IV Curso Anual Interamericano de Elecciones, San José, Costa Rica, 1991.
42. The surveys of Apoyo S.A., IMASEN, and the other major polling organizations provided a fairly consistent and reliable barometer of the general election campaign, despite the difficulties of public opinion research in Peru. In the runoff election, the polls were far off the mark, primarily because many pro-Fujimori voters were reluctant to reveal their true preference.
43. Sandra L. Woy-Hazelton, "The Return of Partisan Politics in Peru," in Stephen M. Gorman, ed., Post-Revolutionary Peru: The Politics of Transformation (Boulder: Westview Press, 1982), p. 36.
44. Alfonso Barrantes emphasized the negative implications of Article 166 for leftist unity in 1980 in an interview, August 23, 1994.
45. The primary beneficiary of this article has been Róger Cáceres, the leader of the Frente Nacional de Trabajadores y Campesinos (FRENATRACA), a small regional party, who used the publicity generated by presidential candidates in 1980, 1985, and 1990 to enhance successful campaigns for the senate.
46. Jochamowitz, pp. 259-262; confirmed in an interview with Hugo Otero, a key political advisor to President Alan García, August 25, 1994.
47. Interviews with Ramiro Prialé Z., a young aprista leader in charge of the party's election monitoring and tabulation unit, August 18 and 22, 1994.
48. Daeschner, p. 137.
49. Interview with Barrantes. According to Barrantes, Fujimori thought that C-90 would win only one senate seat, so he tried to persuade San Roman to head the party's list for the lower house in metropolitan Lima. Under Peru's version of open list PR, discussed later in this article, San Román was Fujimori's principal competitor for C-90 preferential votes.
50. García had won 53 percent of the valid vote, but only 46 percent of the total vote, including spoiled and blank ballots.
51. The discussion in this and the next paragraph draws on Shugart and Carey, ch. 10.
52. For a spatial analysis of the 1990 Peruvian election, see Cameron, ch. 6.
53. Shugart and Carey, p. 216.
54. See especially Vargas Llosa, "A Fish Out of Water," pp. 31-32.
55. Also see Ivaro Vargas Llosa, El diablo en campaña (Madrid: Ediciones El País S.A./Aguilar S.A. de Ediciones), pp. 29, 32.
56. Cameron, p. 123. The term "heresthetic" was coined by William Riker.
57. The presentations of the presidential candidates at the CADE are summarized in Resumen Semanal, Dec. 1-7, 1989, pp. 1-3.
58. For analysis, see "El vargazo" and "Otros planes," Caretas, Dec. 4, 1989, pp. 10-15, 88;
59. Vargas Llosa, El pez en el agua, pp. 351-370.
60. A summary of Vargas Llosa's platform is included in Wilson Jaime Barreto, Marketing político: Elecciones 1990 (Lima: Universidad del Pacífico, 1991), pp. 95-108.
61. "Mario Vargas Llosa," Resumen Semanal, Jan. 19-25, 1990, p. 3.
62. A quixotic sense of adventure and daring pervades the novelist's autobiography, El pez en el agua. Also, see the comments by his wife, Patricia, in "A Fish Out of Water," p. 33.
63. In a January 1990 survey, respondents placed Vargas Llosa at 8.7 on the 1-10 left-right scale, slightly closer to 6, both the mean and median value for respondent self-placement, than Barrantes' 3.2 score.
64. From July 1989 through February 1990, Vargas Llosa's margin in projected runoff races never fell below 20 percent in Lima. As the race tightened in March 1990, it dipped to a still comfortable 17 percent. The only available national poll during this period gave him a margin of 23 percent over his nearest rival in a projected second round.
65. See "Asunto clave," Caretas, Jan. 29, 1990, pp. 10-14, 16, 83, 86.
66. "Resortes de la campanña," Caretas, Jan. 8, 1990, pp. 39, 43, 58;
67. "Tomando el pulso," Oiga, Feb. 5, 1990, pp. 24-25;
68. "First-Round Win for Mario Vargas Llosa?," Latin American Weekly Report, Feb. 15, 1990, p. 11;
69. "Caída en Lima," Caretas, Apr. 2, 1990, pp. 16-17.
70. In a December 1989 survey, respondents ranked the novelist as the most credible of the presidential candidates, but by a slight margin (43 to 41 percent) they also indicated that he was not believable.
71. Interview with Federico Velarde, August 18, 1994.
72. "Elecciones 1990" and "Vistos de cerca," Caretas, Jan. 8, 1990, pp. 30-31, 38.
73. This paragraph draws on an interview with Carlos García y García, Fujimori's running mate for the second vice presidency, August 24, 1994; "Evangelistas hicieron trabajo de base a favor de Fujimori en zonas controladas por Sendero," El Comercio, May 19, 1990, p. A 8; and Jochamowitz, pp. 272-275.
74. Interviews with Otero and Prialé. See also " 'Juicio de residencia" para García," Resumen Semanal, Dec. 8-14, 1989, p. 3.
75. Interview with Otero.
76. Otero maintains that García would have pursued a different strategy under a plurality or quasi-pluralily format, most probably attempting to maximize the size of the aprista congressional delegation in order to block Vargas Llosa's program or even his election. He was alluding to the 1933 constitution, under which congress elected the president if no candidate received a third of the vote.
77. Interviews with Otero, Prialé, and Barrantes. The latter acknowledged the assistance from García, though he downplayed its importance.
78. Vargas Llosa, El diablo en campaña, p. 68.
79. Peru employs the d'Hondt rule, the most common PR allocation method in Latin America.
80. The election of the senate in a single national district was a "temporary" constitutional measure, supposedly only in force until regional governments were formed. However, it suited the interest of Lima-based politicians and remained in effect for the duration of the 1979 constitution.
81. The politics behind the VPD and its effects, including incentives for interparty alliances, are analyzed in Gregory D. Schmidt, "Peru's Preferential Vote System: Interparty Alliances and Intraparty Competition," paper presented at the 1994 Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, New York, September 3, 1994.
82. The different mechanics and impacts of closed list and open list PR, as well as other preference systems, are discussed in Richard S. Katz, "Intraparty Preference Voting," in Bernard Grofman and Arendt Lijphart, eds., Electoral Laws and Their Political Consequences (New York: Agathon Press, 1986), pp. 85-103;
83. Rein Taagepera and Matthew Soberg Shugart, Seats and Votes: The Effects and Determinants of Electoral Systems (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989), ch. 3.
84. For example, in 1990 it took only 3,000 signatures to register an independent list in metropolitan Lima, which had some 3.4 million registered voters. See "Olas en racha," Caretas, Jan. 15, 1990, pp. 32-33.
85. "Gastos de campaña, Caretas, Mar. 12, 1990, pp. 14-15.
86. "Balance final," Caretas, Apr. 10, 1990, p. 16.
87. Vargas Llosa, El pez en el agua, pp. 410-411.
88. See Degregori, esp. pp. 87-88, for an excellent discussion of this point.
89. In October 1989 Barrantes had a favorable rating of 72 percent and an unfavorable rating of only 19 percent among survey respondents. The respective figures for Vargas Llosa in a September 1989 survey were 66 and 22 percent.
90. This paragraph is based on the interview with Barrantes.
91. Ibid.
92. Interview with Enrique Bernales, August 24, 1994.
93. Interview with Barrantes.
94. By far the most damaging aprista spot used animated scenes from the movie The Wall by the English rock group Pink Floyd to portray the devastating consequences that would supposedly follow a FREDEMO shock. At its climax, a disembodied, ghost-white head emerges from a wall, opens a huge mouth, and screams in anguish.
95. A March poll in Lima gave Vargas Llosa a 51-34 percent margin over Barrantes and a 54-24 percent edge over Alva Castro. The novelist even had a 38-31 percent lead over the aprista candidate among respondents from the pueblos jóvenes.
96. Interview with Miguel Vega Alvear, a leading member of the ML and participant in the "kitchen cabinet" during the campaign, August 23, 1994. A 40 percent rating in the polls, in which nonresponses and blank votes were included in the total, would translate into a higher percentage of the valid vote.
97. Interview with Otero. According to Barrantes, García had previously violated an understanding by actively campaigning for Jorge del Castillo, the aprista candidate who had narrowly thwarted el frejolito's 1986 bid for reelection as mayor of Lima.
98. This paragraph is based on the interview with Otero. Also see Daeschner, esp. pp. 89, 193-196. Fujimori had held several minor advisory posts under García, who also made him the moderator of a little-watched public affairs program on the government television network and offered him a cabinet position as minister of agriculture. See Jochamowitz, pp. 259-261.
99. Interviews with Otero and Prialé. The SNI connection involved Vladimiro Montesinos, a shadowy, cashiered ex-army captain who later played a key role in Fujimori's turn to authoritarianism. In the second round, Otero and the SNI helped Fujimori prepare for his televised debate with Vargas Llosa. See Daeschner, pp. 266-268.
100. Fujimori understood the potential vagaries of the majority runoff format, as the result of a bitter experience in academic politics. See Jochamowitz, pp. 215-217. He also was receiving strategic advice and polling data from García and the SNI.
101. El chinito's modest first round media campaign cost only $179,979. In contrast, 53,603,989 was spent on media advertising by Vargas Llosa's campaign, 52,056,568 by Alva Castro's, and $1,417,707 by Barrantes'. See "Balance final."
102. "Fujimori Supera a Pease" and "Fujimori al 9%," Página Libre, Mar. 18, 1990, pp. 1, 3.
103. According to a February 1990 poll, Japan was the country most admired by Peruvians. Peruvians of Chinese ancestry, with whom Fujimori was frequently confused, also are well-respected for their industriousness.
104. The principal positions taken by Fujimori during the general election campaign are summarized in José María Salcedo, Tsunami Fujimori: Los secretos de un fenómeno político (Lima: La República, 1990), pp. 84-90.
105. Interviews with Vega Alvear; Lourdes Flores Nano, at the time a FREDEMO candidate for the lower house and rising star in the PPC, August 15, 1994; and Valentín Paniagua, a prominent AP politician who was with the Vargas Llosa campaign in Cuzco when it received word of Fujimori's breakthrough in the polls, August 16, 1994. Also see Cameron, p. 116.
106. Varas Llosa, El diablo en campaña, pp. 131-139;
107. Vargas Llosa, El pez en el agua, pp. 443-444.
108. This section uses aggregate electoral data from Fernando Tuesta Soldevilla, "Peru," in Dieter Nohlen, ed., Encyclopedia Electoral Latinoamericana y del Caribe (San José: Instituto Interamericano de Derechos Humanos, 1993), p. 534; and disaggregated returns from the Jurado Nacional de Elecciones. Although turnout in the 1990 general election was below the norm for the 1980s, due to threats from Sendero, 83 percent of eligible voters voted in Lima and 77 percent nationwide. Blank ballots accounted for 8 percent of all votes cast, while 7 percent were spoiled.
109. In the 180 member chamber of deputies, FREDEMO claimed sixty-two seats, of which twenty-six were won by AP, twenty-five by the PPC, only nine by the ML, and two by Solidaridad y Democracia (SODE), a small but prestigious group that ran candidates in some of the ML slots. APRA took fifty-three house seats, C-90 thirty-two, the IU sixteen, the IS four, and the other lists thirteen. In the sixty member senate, FREDEMO won twenty seats, of which seven were filled by AP, six by the ML, five by the PPC, one by SODE, and one by an independent. APRA took sixteen senate seats, C-90 fourteen, the IU six, the IS three, and FRENATRACA one. See Webb and Fernández Baca de Valdez, p. 1032.
110. Cameron, p. 121; and Eliana Chávez O'Brien, "¿Votarõn los informales por Fujimori? Una reveladora encuesta," Quehacer, 64 (May-June 1990), 36-42.
111. See polling data from the Compañía Peruana de Investigación de Mercado S.A. presented in "Cómo creció," Caretas, April 10, 1990, pp. 22-24.
112. Henry A. Dietz, "Codebook for 1990 Study of Electoral Behavior in Metropolitan Lima," Department of Government, University of Texas at Austin, p. 38.
113. Interviews with Otero and Prialé.
114. Interviews with Prialé.
115. This paragraph is based on interviews with Giovanna Peñaflor, Martín Sánchez, and Manuel Córdova of IMASEN, August 24, 1994.
116. Survey data from IMASEN; "Cómo creció."
117. A more extensive presentation of this statistical analysis will be included in Schmidt, Understanding the Fujimori Tsunami.
118. See Vargas Llosa, El diablo en campaña, pp. 147-160;
119. Vargas Llosa, El pez en el agua, pp. 449-454, 475-488.
120. See Barreto, Marketing político, p. 171; and Webb and Fernández Baca de Valdez, p. 1031.
121. Otero believes that Barrantes would have been the runner-up had he campaigned with some zest. El frejolito himself thinks that he would have placed a respectable third, behind Vargas Llosa and Alva Castro, but ahead of Fujimori. Interviews with Otero and Barrantes.
122. Interview with Velarde, polling data from IMASEN.