Six months ago, Peru might have been in bad shape, but at
least the future looked bright.
It had gone through an electoral crisis, with president Alberto
Fujimori blatantly rigging his way to an unconstitutional third
term, but Fujimori was then exiled in Japan, and the prospects for
free and fair elections in April seemed good. Now Peru looks in
worse shape than ever.
There's now a strong possibility that the next president is going
be Alan Garcia. Garcia needs no introduction to those who followed
the worst excesses of Latin economies at the end of the 1980s. In
his five-year term from 1985 to 1990, he reduced Peru to such a
state of terrorist-plagued hyperinflation that Peruvians happily
embraced Fujimori's authoritarian regime.
By the end of Garcia's term, inflation had reached 78% - in July
alone. The figure for the year as a whole was 7,650%. The...
