Date: Fri, 13 Jun 2003 21:09:36 -0400
Sender: Marxism International <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
From: Louis R Godena <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: [MARXISM-INTERNATIONAL] The current situation on Peru - Article
by A. Olaechea
From: Adolfo Olaechea <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Wednesday, June 04, 2003 6:31 PM
Subject: The current situation on Peru - Article by A. Olaechea
JUSTICE INTERNATIONAL
Below we publish an article by the General Secretary of Justice
International regarding the extremely complicated and dangerous situation
Peru is facing today. The international press is keeping mum on this
regard and whatever they say, does not explain the facts in any shape or
form. The truth is that the current Toledo regime has tried this week to
suppress the people's movement for social and political justice by
introducing a "state of emergency", in the time honoured manner of
Fujimori and Pinochet. However, the current pro-imperialist regime in Peru
has proven unable to make its own dictatorial measures stick. Instead of
cowering in panic, the Peruvian people have defied the state of emergency
demanding the sacking of those responsible for this anti-union and
anti-democratic measure, as well as a solution to their pressing problems
of their hunger and misery in the midst of the orgy of high living and
gargantuan salaries Toledo and his top bureacrats are indulging in and
paying to themselves alone. While a country has been placed in state of
emergency and that state of emergency has proven unenforceable, such an
unprecedented development, with all its implications, is evidently not
news nor merits the barest analysis by the learned columnists that the
international press pays to supposedly keep the western public informed of
what is going on in countries such as Peru, how their tax payers money is
used to support untenable situations which innevitably degenerate sooner
or later into "terrorism", civil war, etc. It is with the purpose of
keeping the world informed of the very significant developments taking
place in countries such as Peru and Nepal, that actually represent today a
different trend than the bankrupt policies of suppression and "pre-emptive
confrontation" advocated by the Bush administration and its lap dogs
eveywhere, that Justice International makes this article by our General
Secretary available both in English and in Spanish through the means of
our own distribution list.
Justice International Secretariat London
TOLEDO'S PERU IN THE HORNS OF A DILEMMA: TO RELY ON THE BAYONETS OR ON THE
PEOPLE
by A. Olaechea
Napoleon is credited with saying that "everything may be done with
bayonets, except sit on them". The French emperor may teach this verity to
the would be Inca emperor of Peru - a.k.a. Alejandro Toledo, the current
President. Toledo makes much of his native origins and impoverished Andean
peasant background and loves being called 'Pachacutec' after the greatest
of the ancient Inca rulers. When he became President after the provisional
government that followed the overthrow of the bizarre and amazingly
corrupt Fujimori dictatorship, the international community showered him
with movingly sentimental best wishes. His new regime was billed as a
model of democratic transformation, not only for the region, but for the
entire third world.
Now, in the face of an unprecedented deluge of long suppressed union and
popular demands and with millions of striking workers and farmers
paralysing the country and occupying the roads, Toledo has started to
emulate Fujimori by clearing the streets with tanks and soldiery. His
response to a country demanding that he delivers on his manifold electoral
promises has been to place the country under a 30 day state of emergency
and to declare the strikes illegal.
The Peruvian press has reacted to his move with astonishment and despair:
"Toledo sets the country ablaze" is the headline in La Razon. In a piece
entitled "Wretched Government" it accuses Toledo of bringing the country
to its knees, risking the return of military rule and claims that the
"decomposition of the present government" is creating "the disastrous
situation the country finds itself in today".
According to La Republica, Toledo "has done little to change the extreme
inequalities bequeathed by his predecessor" with "the poor getting poorer,
while many big enterprises cheat their way to higher profits". "This sense
of social injustice is what fuels popular unrest".
Between 1992 and 2000, both the US and the EU governments aided and
abetted the murderous regime of Alberto Fujimori and even today, after he
fled the country in shame, the Japanese are still protecting this former
dictator who stands accused of wholesale crimes against humanity.
The international community supported Fujimori because the country was
about to fall into the hands of the Maoists of the Shining Path who were
branded as bloody minded terrorists. Their aim, however, was and always
has been to bring about a democratic revolution to take Peru, a country
that is rapidly going to the dogs, out of a semi-feudal and semi-colonial
situation.
In Peru, the war on terror, US style, did not begin on 11th September
2001. Guantanamo Bay style treatment of prisoners was first pioneered by
Fujimori and his CIA trained adviser, Vladimiro Montesinos and applied to
the captured Maoist leader, Abimael Guzman in full view of the world press
back in 1992.
After the fall of Fujimori, Peruvians wanted the provisional government to
settle the problems left behind by the Fujimori regime. What they got
instead was procrastination and farcical elections supported by foreign
powers which resulted in a government with no legitimacy to do anything
but transit the same old and bankrupt road of ruthless confrontation with
the people. A few days before the run-off between the two leading
candidates, opinion polls indicated that over 70% of the electorate
intended not to vote or spoil the ballot. With this in prospect, big shots
from the EU and Madeleine Albright from the US were urgently flown to Peru
to cajole the electorate into voting. From the Vatican, even the Pope
chimed in. They provoked fears of instability and threatened with flight
of capital from the country if the elections, as seemed likely, would fail
to reach the minimum level of participation to be regarded as valid, thus
forcing the provisional government to remain in office and actuallly
tackle those problems. In the event, in a country where hefty fines are
imposed for non-voting, absenteeism and spoilt ballots still exceeded 35%
and of those who did vote, very few cast their ballots out of genuine
support for any of the candidates. The majority merely used their vote to
block the election of the candidate they hated most. Such elections where
only politicians of the establishment are able or allowed to stand were
never going to lend legitimacy to anyone. Instead, these elections have
aggravated the crisis of Peruvian society. Now, with the state of
emergency threatening to become the standard response to social unrest,
this situation is likely to lead to the very use of terrorist methods of
political rule and struggle that the leaders of the international
community so loudly proclaim to fight against.
Toledo has stubbornly refused to resolve the problems generated by the
civil conflict and intends to comply with US directives to keep the
'terrorists' for ever buried in cells ten feet underground in the Naval
base of Callao. Recently, lawyers for the Maoist leader, Guzman, had to
interpose an Habeas Corpus demanding respect for the imprisoned leader's
constitutional rights. The Toledo government tried to force him to accept
a re-trial before a special tribunal while simultaneously nobbling the
judges to impose the same sentence as that imposed by Fujimori's hooded
military court which has been ruled illegal and invalid by the
constitutional tribunal.
At the moment, with the country under a state of emergency, a military
coup and/or civil war loom darkly on the horizon. The people are deeply
frustrated, they feel cheated and are in even more abject despair than before.
Meanwhile, one of the first measures of Mr. Toledo after coming to power
was to raise his and his ministers' salaries to Western standards. He now
earns more than Tony Blair and the earnings of the top bureaucrats in Peru
are within European parameters. The big powers, interested as they are in
subservient governments who do as they are told, who keep paying the
foreign debt and who keep 'the troublesome peasants down", have now, with
Toledo, 'the Inca from Harvard', run out of bogus democratic solutions for
Peru.
It does not have to be like this. The interests of people the world over
are hanging on how problems of civil conflict and lack of genuine
democracy in countries like Peru are resolved. Contrast this situation
with that prevailing in Nepal where disciples of the Peruvian imprisoned
Maoist leader Abimael Guzman are now participating openly in the political
life of a country ruled by a monarch and helping to resolve its deep
rooted social and political problems. This became possible because the
royal Nepalese government had the good sense - against US and other big
powers exhortations - of withdrawing the tag of 'terrorists' from the
freedom fighters of Nepal. Today, their leader, Dr. Baburam Bhattarai, has
offices in Kathmandu, a few streets away from the royal palace, and is
considered "the most important person in Kathmandu today" by Western
correspondents like Luke Harding of The Guardian (29/05/03).
"We want peace, but peace with change", declares the Nepalese leader and
that is exactly what Bhattarai's comrades in Peru want. Toledo, obeying
the directives of the US 'war on terrorism' stands in the way of what
every right thinking person in Peru wants. That is the root cause of his
own dilemma today. With this first state of emergency in his government,
Toledo has got himself 30 days. Should he make of this a system of rule,
it is most likely that he will never make it to the end of his term as
president in 2006. None of the problems that necessitated this emergency
are going to go away. On the contrary, these can only become more acute as
time ticks on.
Paradoxically, if Toledo were to do as King Gyanendra's government in
Nepal has done - in defiance of the useless anti-terrorist policies of the
Bushes and the Blairs - he could still make good use of this breather for
the expedient resolution of the political problem in Peru. Then, his
resorting to the bayonet in this desperate situation would not mean a
final declaration of war on his people but the start of a new and
promising period, not only for Peru and the region, but for a world hungry
for practical solutions to apparently intractable problems of the very
same nature.
