PERU: CRISIS OF TRADITIONAL POLITICAL PARTIES

UNCLAS LIMA 000027

SIPDIS

SENSITIVE
SIPDIS

E.O. 12958: N/A
TAGS: PGOV PREL PE
SUBJECT: PERU: CRISIS OF TRADITIONAL POLITICAL PARTIES

REF: LIMA 4744

Sensitive but Unclassified. Please handle accordingly.


1. (SBU) Summary: Peru's national parties suffered an
electoral drubbing during the November 19 regional/municipal
elections. President Garcia's APRA party, Ollanta Humala's
Peruvian Nationalist Party (PNP),Union for Peru (UPP),and
Unidad Nacional (UN) all demonstrated a manifest lack of
national appeal. Independent parties and local movements
claimed the majority of regional presidencies and provincial
capitals. Most Peruvians do not identify with any specific
party, and the electorate's continued volatility suggests the
ease with which another Humala-like outsider could arise from
the regions. To strengthen its democracy, Peru needs
political parties that better represent public interests.
End Summary.


2. (SBU) Peru's traditional parties lost control of the
political map in the November 19 regional and municipal
elections. The APRA, which claimed 12 regional presidencies
in 2002, came away with only 2 (La Libertad and Piura) this
time around. At the same time, Humala's PNP failed to
capture a single regional presidency and won only one
provincial capital (Arequipa). (Even there the winner has
much closer ties to the local community than to the party,
ref.) The UPP, the PNP's former coalition partner, won only
one regional presidency, in Cusco. Finally, the UN won the
mayoral seat in Lima and 24 of Lima's 41 districts but failed
to capture a single office outside the capital.


3. (SBU) Collapsed faith in the traditional parties combined
with low barriers to entry for new parties produced a
plethora of local candidates and many new office holders
whose appeal and reach are narrowly circumscribed.
Independent parties and local social movements won 21 of the
25 regional presidencies, most of the provincial capitals,
and a host of local offices. The raft of locally-based
winners reflects voters' preferences for candidates they
perceive as closer to their interests rather than more
distant influences.


4. (SBU) Unfortunately, local leaders are no guarantee of
good leadership. Many of those elected are new to politics,
and the abundance of local candidates -- an average of 9
candidates for each regional presidency -- has ensured that
few candidates can claim a strong mandate to govern.
Independent regional presidents, for example, won with an
average of only 31% of the vote, and several with far less
than that. Moreover, while local movements may promote new
faces, the absence of strong national parties translates into
a lack of national-level consensus-building mechanisms for
forging larger-scale policies. An additional danger is that
competing caudillos may play only to their constituents, and
even seek to undermine central government policies for
short-term political gain. As one analyst put it, some of
these new leaders are clearly more interested in creating
than in resolving conflict.

Comment: Rebuilding Peru's Parties
--------------


5. (SBU) Peru's established parties are weak and lack
national reach. The winners in the November
municipal/regional elections were locally known candidates
who latched on to regional/local movements. To strengthen a
key pillar of its democratic system, Peru needs to develop
efficient, transparent national-level parties that can better
channel public interests, respond to public demands, and
resist the infiltration of narco-candidates. For the moment,
while APRA continues to hold strong influence in the national
political arena, populist regional leaders will be eager to
exploit regional conflicts and government shortcomings, real
and perceived, and to offer themselves as an alternative to
the present administration -- just as Humala did in 2005.


6. (SBU) USAID plans to develop an initiative to strengthen
political parties and expand their reach. The program would
fortify the capacity of parties to represent citizens better
and to govern more effectively. End Comment.


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