Peruvian voters to pick between bad and worse

Left-wing nationalist Ollanta Humala leads the polls in Peru's deadlocked presidential contest. Picture / Reuters

Beatriz Alonso is having her nails done at a mall in the middle-class neighbourhood of Jesus Maria as she watches the electoral results on television.

She cringes as she hears that the gap between the second and third-placed presidential candidates is narrowing. With 99 per cent of the polls in, three weeks after the elections, Alan Garcia has edged ahead.

They've been in a dead-heat since the April 9 election. Since no candidate managed to get more than 50 per cent of the vote, whoever is second will proceed to a run-off early next month with first-placed candidate Ollanta Humala.

By Wednesday it was over for third-placed Lourdes Flores, the woman investors saw as the best candidate to run Peru's $75 billion economy.

With almost all the ballots tallied, there were too few left to give Flores an advantage. Garcia had 24.32 per cent, or 2.98 million votes and Flores 23.8 per cent, or 2.92 million votes.

"It looks like we'll have to choose between bad and worse," says Alonso, a 28-year-old telecommunications receptionist. "Alan left the country in ruins and Ollanta is too radical."

Humala, a left-wing nationalist, is a former colonel who led a failed coup attempt against Alberto Fujimori in 2000. His authoritarian tendencies, sabre-rattling at Chile and his praise for Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro have raised many worries within Peru and adjacent countries.

Chavez has publicly backed Humala and called his most likely opponent, Garcia, "corrupt" and a "bandit".

Humala's anti-globalisation platform has also raised concerns, even prompting outgoing President Alejandro Toledo to hurriedly sign a free-trade agreement with the United States the week after the elections - an agreement Humala has vowed to reverse.

Humala's showing at the polls surprised many who underestimated the appeal of his anti-establishment platform in a country where more than 50 per cent of the population is below the poverty line.

Although Humala grew up in a middle-class neighbourhood in the capital, his support has been strongest in rural areas and among the poor and indigenous classes.

He comes from a family with a long political tradition. His father, Isaac Humala, championed the eccentric philosophy of "etnocacerismo", a racist creed which calls on Peru's "copper-skinned" natives to wrest power from the white upper classes.