Knight Ridder Newspapers

LIMA, Peru – Alan Garcia won the presidency of Peru on Sunday, official figures showed, making an improbable comeback from a presidential term in the 1980s that even his backers admit was disastrous, exile in the 1990s and an electoral defeat five years ago.

Garcia, a moderate leftist, won 55 percent of the vote to defeat retired Lt. Col. Ollanta Humala, an ultra-nationalist leftist, who had 45 percent, with 77 percent of the vote counted Sunday night. Three exit polls showed Garcia winning by about the same margin.

“Garcia was the least bad of two bad choices,” Javier Osorio, a bank employee, said at his polling station, in a sentiment shared by many. “I just hope he’s changed.”

Sunday’s results have important implications beyond this Alaska-sized country with 27 million people, as Garcia didn’t hesitate to address in his first postelection remarks Sunday night.

Garcia said Peruvians had sent an overwhelming message to Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez that they had rejected the “strategy of expansion of a militaristic, retrograde model that he has tried to impose in South America.”

Chavez had backed Humala in the fervent hope that Peru would join Cuba and Bolivia in a Venezuelan-led socialist and populist bloc that opposes market friendly policies supported by the United States and Brazil. Garcia has neither endorsed nor rejected a free-trade agreement negotiated with Washington but awaiting congressional approval.

Chavez took the unusual step of publicly endorsing Humala, as had Bolivia’s new president, Evo Morales. Brazil, the United States and Chile quietly favored Garcia.

“Most indications are that Garcia will steer a middle course, which will likely calm any jitters the international financial and investment community might have about Peru,” David Scott Palmer, a Boston University international relations professor who has been coming to Peru since 1962, said by telephone. “For U.S. officials, the result will bring a collective sigh of relief. It means they will have one less challenge they have to deal with in the region.”

Garcia had traded insults with Chavez, using the public spat to frame the election as a choice between voting for Peru or for Chavez and eventually forcing Humala to urge the Venezuelan leader to butt out. It was a display of why many analysts consider Garcia to be Peru’s cleverest politician in the last 25 years.

Garcia lost the 2001 race to outgoing President Alejandro Toledo, after returning to Peru following nine years in exile in France and Spain while the government of President Alberto Fujimori attempted to jail him on corruption charges.

Sunday’s victory gives Garcia a long-sought chance at political redemption after he reinvented himself as a wise, elder statesman. Peru’s media and political elite favored him.

Garcia, 57, emerged victorious by repeating at every turn that he had learned from the mistakes of his 1985-90 presidency, when he left office with the country facing food shortages, spreading terrorist attacks by the Shining Path guerrillas and galloping inflation. The amount of money it took to purchase a new car in 1985 would buy only a box of matches in 1990.

Few Peruvians over the age of 25 have forgotten those days, and for many voters it took a leap of faith to choose him on Sunday.

“I believe he has learned from his mistakes,” said Marlene Pisango, an elementary school teacher. “People deserve second chances.”

As the campaign went on, Garcia seemed more and more willing to admit his past mistakes.

“The lines (to buy food) are one of the sins that the public will have to forgive us for,” Garcia told tens of thousands of supporters gathered in the Plaza of Naval Heroes in downtown Lima for his final campaign rally Thursday night.

Garcia also played on fears that Humala would ditch democracy in favor of the military rule practiced by one of his heroes, former dictator Gen. Juan Velasco, who ruled from 1968 to 1975.

Humala, 43, is a career soldier who staged a brief and failed coup attempt in 2000. A political unknown as recently as nine months ago, he led the first round of presidential voting on April 9, with 30.6 percent in a field of 20 candidates, but was forced into a run-off with the second-place Garcia.

Humala campaigned against the corruption associated with Garcia’s presidency and promised to nationalize the country’s foreign-owned mineral holdings and redistribute wealth from Peru’s economic elite to the disenfranchised poor.

This message resonated particularly among the poor, who constitute nearly one out of every two Peruvians.

“We need a fairer system where everybody benefits,” said Luis Marin, a 50-year-old resident in the Lima shantytown of San Juan de Lurigancho. “We need a fairer system where everybody enjoys the benefits.”

But Humala was accused of human rights violations during the government’s fight against the Shining Path. His brother Antauro had led another military uprising, in 2005, that ended with the death of four policemen and his capture.

These events – along with his own uprising – helped Garcia frame his campaign message as the candidate “for responsible change” and against “hate and violence.”

“I voted for Alan to make sure we still have democracy,” said Helena Zanartu, a singer.

In defeat, however, Humala won’t be disappearing into the night. In the April 9 elections, his political party won 45 seats, the biggest bloc in the 120-member unicameral Congress. Garcia’s American Popular Revolutionary Alliance, better known as APRA, won 36 seats.

The conservative National Union alliance led by Lourdes Flores, who narrowly trailed Garcia on April 9 for the second spot in Sunday’s run-off election, won 17 seats, while the political party of Fujimori won 13 seats. Smaller parties won the remaining nine seats, including two for outgoing Toledo’s Peru Possible party.

One of Garcia’s first decisions will come even before he takes office on July 28 when Peru’s Congress votes within the next month whether to approve the free-trade agreement with Washington. Passage of the agreement will be difficult without the support of Apra’s 28 votes. The agreement would also need approval of the U.S. Congress to take effect.

After taking office in 2001, Toledo will leave behind perhaps the strongest economy that Peru has seen in at least 50 years. Under Toledo, exports doubled, foreign reserves hit a record $17 billion, inflation remained low at 2.5 percent, budget deficits virtually disappeared, bad bank loans declined and foreign debt as a percentage of per capita income declined. Peru’s economic output is similar to Utah’s.

Peru has ridden the wave of high export prices for its gold, copper and tin and has found markets in the United States and Europe for its asparagus, mangoes, paprika and avocados.

But many poor Peruvians feel left behind by the country’s improving economy.

“We still have a lot of poor people,” said Prime Minister Pedro-Pablo Kuczynski.