Nationalist presidential candidate Ollanta Humala promised Saturday to free Peru from centuries of racial discrimination but vowed not to risk economic policies that have made the country one of the world’s top mineral exporters.
Comparing Peru to a restaurant where foreigners run the kitchen and cash register, the former army commander said it was time to end the “kidnapping of my nation by multinational companies,” and help the half of Peruvians who are poor.
“We want to raise the flag on a free Peru, free from oppression and from the powerful who don’t solve this country’s problems,” Humala told Reuters in an interview at his house in a middle class Lima suburb.
Preaching economic revolution and nationalism, Humala came first among 20 candidates in the first round of presidential voting on April 9, but polls put him far behind left-of-center former president Alan Garcia before the June 4 runoff.
Humala, who has never held elected office, has been hurt by worries that he is too extreme, possibly anti-democratic and too close to Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, also a nationalist ex-army commander, whose radical ideas and anti-Washington rhetoric alienate many Peruvians.
Humala said many have tried to politicize his relationship with Chavez, but he had only ever met Chavez once and did not see his potential government echoing Venezuela’s.
“I want to unite our society, I want to end racial discrimination and end the favoritism that your surname or your money can buy,” he said, taking a break from playing with his two baby daughters along with his 30-year-old wife Nadine.
But Humala’s proposals, which have made him a hero to the poor and hate figure for some in the middle class, worry business leaders.
Garcia leads Humala by 59.9 percent to 40.1 percent, according to CPI poll results released on Sunday. Garcia is seen as a pro-business moderate despite his 1985-1990 government that caused hyperinflation and food shortages.
‘Economic stability’
Humala said his plans to give the government greater control of mining and energy would not endanger the economic model that helped Peru’s gross domestic product to increase by 7 percent in 2005.
“I want to strengthen the middle class, I want to help small businesses. It is Alan Garcia who destroyed the middle class during his government,” Humala said, referring to the economic collapse during Garcia’s first term.
“We’re going to work on economic stability, a careful fiscal policy ... low inflation and there won’t be any traumatic changes on the economic front,” Humala said.
Peruvians who have no access to schools and hospitals say Humala is what the country needs after 15 years of pro-business policies whose benefits have not trickled down to the needy.
But the country’s small middle class fears a return to the 1968-1975 military dictatorship of Gen. Juan Velasco, which kicked out foreign companies, nationalized a U.S. oil company, and set the economy into a 15-year tailspin.
Pro-Velasco comments by Humala have prompted Peru’s media to dub him “as a threat to democracy.” Humala launched a failed coup in 2000 against then President Alberto Fujimori.
“I am a democrat ... I’m not going to hurt the profitability of the economy, of the mining sector. But I want the state to participate ... we’re going to renegotiate the contracts that are damaging to our country,” Humala said.
Humala says gold mines such as Yanacocha in northern Peru, Latin America’s largest bullion pit, make a $400 profit on every ounce mined, most of which leaves the country because the mine is U.S.-owned.
But mining companies say Peru will receive a record $820 million in 2006 via royalties and income tax paid by miners, equivalent to slightly more than the government’s total annual health and education budget.