Peru's presidential candidate Lourdes Flores (second right) dances with supporters during her final campaign rally in Lima Thursday. Peruvians will go to the polls in the first round of presidential elections tomorrow. - Reuters
AREQUIPA, Peru (AP):
A POLL released yesterday showed a dead heat among the three front-runners in tomorrow's presidential elections, with populist former army officer Ollanta Humala dropping seven percentage points.
Humala, a political outsider endorsed by President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela and whose anti-oligarchic rhetoric alarms the political establishment, fell to 26 per cent support in the nationwide poll by Datum.
Pro-business former congresswoman Lourdes Flores and ex-President Alan Garcia rose to 24 per cent each, up one and two percentage points, respectively, from a March 30 survey by Datum.
Since the poll's error margin was plus or minus two per cent, the survey of 2,536 people conducted Wednesday puts the three candidates in a tie.
Another respected polling firm, CPI, published results on Thursday also showed the top three candidates in a dead heat. That poll had Flores with 28 per cent, Humala with 26 per cent and 25 per cent for Garcia, a centre leftist whose 1985-1990 presidency was marred by corruption and hyperinflation.
It had a margin of error of two per cent.
If no single candidate wins 50 percent of the vote on Sunday, the top two vote-getters will face each other in a May runoff.
A poll published Sunday by the Apoyo firm, the last opinion survey Peruvian media were allowed to publish ahead of the election, showed Humala with 31 per cent compared to 26 percent for Flores and 23 per cent favouring Garcia. Its margin of error was 2 per cent.
Peruvian law prohibits the publishing of polling data in the week before elections, though foreign press accounts are available on the Internet.
The candidates closed their campaigns Thursday night.
At his rally, Humala railed against the "fascist dictatorship of the economically powerful" that he says has robbed Peru of democracy. Speaking in Arequipa, an Andean mountain city of nearly one million, the self-proclaimed nationalist repeated his vow to exact higher taxes and royalties from multinational companies who profit from the extraction of Peru's rich mineral resources.
A talented orator, Garcia promised job creation and investment in agriculture in his speech in central Lima while refusing to fan the flames of discontent.
In a clear stab at her rivals, Flores cautioned supporters at a simultaneous rally a few blocks away not to "allow improvisation and demagoguery to come back and control our destinies. Let's vote with sobriety. Let's vote with maturity."
Throughout the campaign, Flores has hit hard at Humala's populist line of restoring national pride and economic sovereignty.
But Humala has not backed down from his central campaign theme.
"Nationalism is the force that says to multinational companies that don't want to pay royalties and taxes that we're going to renegotiate their contracts," he told the crowd in Arequipa.
That's exactly what Chavez has done in Venezuela and what Evo Morales, elected president of Bolivia in December, has vowed to do with his country's natural gas resources.
The candidacy of Humala, a former lieutenant colonel, has polarised the nation.
He's drawn the sympathy of Peru's poor, largely indigenous majority, just as Morales did in Bolivia, promising to dethrone a corrupt political class of European descendants.
"Humala is the only option. There's no other," said Eugenio Mamanica, a 44-year-old supporter, adding "let's hope he marks a change because if he doesn't people will have to take to the streets and protest."
Mamanica said most people in Peru's southern Andean highlands favour Humala because "he represents the idea of better days for those of us who aren't white."
But others in Arequipa consider Humala little more than an opportunist.
"Ollanta Humala is an extremist, a radical thinker," said 32-year-old Rosangela Guzman, who said she was voting for Flores "because she is the least bad."
Elberto Morales, 74, confronted a radical group of Humala supporters before Thursday's rally, telling them: "Humala isn't any more than someone who's taking advantage of the ignorance of people in need."
