Fun and Games in Lima.(Peruvian politics)(Brief Article)

A Peruvian journalist once described last Sunday's runoff election between Alan Garcia and Alejandro Toledo as "a choice between the gas chamber and the electric chair." However overstated the metaphor, the pronouncement by talk-show host Jaime Bayly two months ago faithfully mirrored the sentiments of many Peruvians as they trooped to the polls. In the final run-up to the balloting--the country's fourth national election in 14 months--anywhere from one fifth to a quarter of Peru's 15 million registered voters were expected to spoil their ballots or leave them unmarked--a silent protest over their meager choices: a former head of state who fled the country to avoid prosecution or a technocrat of dubious personal morals and fickle politics.

The real shocker is that either man would be an improvement in Peru. Whatever its final outcome, the election will end the chaos that began with last year's corrupt elections and bring to power a legitimate, democratically elected president. That will be good news for Peru, but maybe not for the winner. A host of daunting challenges faces him--from a faltering war on drug trafficking to the ongoing search for former spymaster Vladimiro Montesinos. But no issue will command more attention than the need to generate new jobs and jump-start the sluggish economy. Roughly half of the country's 25 million people get by on the equivalent of $1.25 a day, and an estimated two thirds of the labor force is either jobless or underemployed.

The political farce playing out over the last year has hardly helped. Peruvians have been bombarded by a dizzying concatenation of events that started with the emergence of Toledo in March 2000 as a serious challenge to President Alberto Fujimori's ambitions for a third consecutive five-year term. Through a blend of pork-barrel politics and blatant election rigging, Fujimori managed to fend off Toledo's challenge--only to collapse within a matter of weeks last fall when secret videos showing Montesinos bribing one of Toledo's own congressional candidates went public. By November, the once invincible Fujimori was stewing in self-imposed exile in Japan and Montesinos had become one of the world's most sought-after fugitives.

But not even that breathtaking series of downfalls and upheavals could have prepared the country for perhaps the unlikeliest development of all: the renaissance of Alan Garcia. Garcia handed the presidency over to Fujimori in disgrace in 1990 and, as recently as seven months ...