Peru must feel ignored. Three of its neighbors - Brazil, Chile, and Colombia are consistently praised by the Western press for their efficient economic management. The other two, Bolivia and Ecuador, attract attention for their ALBA initiative for regional integration. But in public relations terms, Peru lags behind, and few people are aware that this vibrant country of almost thirty million citizens is once again on the brink of massive political upheaval.

The Andean nation has had an unhappy recent history even by Latin American standards. A two decades long civil war between government forces and the Shining Path rebels left almost seventy thousand dead. The man who claims victory for the war, former President Alberto Fujimori, who served between 1990 and 2000, did not accomplish the feat with clean hands. He launched a “self-coup” in 1992, using the military to purge the national Congress and institutions hostile to him. Fujimori’s tenure was marked by corruption and state repression, and today he is serving a long prison sentence for his many human rights violations.

The post-Fujimori years have not been an era of national healing. In 2006, after a bitter election campaign, the former president Alan García narrowly defeated Ollanta Humala, a nationalist and ally of Hugo Chávez, to gain a second term in office. That García should have returned for another stay in the Casa de Pizarro seems to be almost a grand political joke, for as President from 1985-1990, his corrupt regime oversaw a massive increase in the national debt, poverty, and the devaluation of the currency by more than a million times. He too has been accused of gross abuses of human rights. In short, it was the uselessness of the García administration that created the conditions for the rise of Fujimori in the first place.

The García sequel is no better than the original. Last October, he accepted the resignation of his entire cabinet as a result of a corruption scandal. In June of this year, a government attempt to expropriate indigenous land in the Amazon for the purposes of oil exploration led to clashes that left more than fifty soldiers and civilians dead. Yet another prime minister resigned in the aftermath. And little has been done to end the malnutrition that strikes one in five Peruvian children.

As can be imagined, Alan García has the approval rating to match his dismal performance. In fact, the October poll conducted by Ipsos APOYO Opinión y Mercado for the leading daily El Comercio shows only 26% of Peruvians support the president. The firm, which laudably makes a great deal of information on the results available, openly admits that the survey was conducted only in urban areas. This of course means that the more than a quarter of the population that lives in rural areas must naturally be unrepresented in the poll.

In the 2006 election, García drew his decisive support from the Lima metropolitan area, gaining almost two-thirds of the vote there. He was heavily beaten in rural Peru, in some places losing to Humala by fifty or sixty points. This month, the poll for El Comercio shows that his approval in the capital has plummeted to just 34%. When we consider that the parts of the country that rejected him most resoundingly three years ago are precisely those left out of the poll, it would appear that to credit Garcia with 26% approval would in fact be significantly overstating his popularity. He is fortunate that the constitution spares him the humiliation of running in the next election.

Waiting in the wings is Ollanta Humala, who is looking forward to another try for the presidency in 2011. The former army officer, who came to national prominence after leading a military uprising against the Fujimori regime in 2000, has won the support of the indigenous poor with his Inca nationalism and plain talk (he recently called García and Fujimori “bastards” at a public meeting). With an increase in his percentage of the vote of only 3%, he will be Peru’s next president. But his radicalism terrifies Peru’s elite, which fears being drawn into the Bolivarian axis led by Venezuela.  And from the right the leading candidate is Keiko Fujimori, daughter of Alberto and former first lady, who campaigns on a platform of amnesty for her father and draws support from those who crave the firm leadership he offered.

When just last year only one in four Americans approved of George W. Bush, no one suggested that he might be toppled before his term expired. The U.S.’ strong traditions, institutions, and civil society prevented a collapse into ungovernability. In Peru, none of these things exist, and if Alan García’s administration survives until 2011, it will most likely because it is “the government that divides us least,” as another statesman said long ago. By 2011, at the latest, the presidency will be up for grabs, and Peru must find a new governing majority. This will not be an easy process.

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