Fujimori's 1990 Upset Victory in Peru: Electoral Rules, Contingencies, and Adaptive Strategies

Abstract

The very sudden rise of Alberto Fujimori to the presidency of Peru is unprecedented. At the beginning of March 1990 Fujimori was one of five minor candidates who together claimed no more than one percent of voter preferences in public opinion polls. Yet less than six weeks later in the April 8 general election he almost matched the vote for Mario Vargas Llosa, the internationally acclaimed novelist and overwhelming favorite, whose slick, American-style campaign had spent twenty times more on media advertising. Fujimori immediately became the favorite for the runoff election, which he won by a landslide on June 10. How could the son of Japanese immigrants, who speaks Spanish with a noticeable accent, rise fronm political obscurity to become the frontrunner in a matter of weeks and president-elect in several months? Observers of Peruvian politics have linked Fujimori's tsunami, or electoral tidal wave, to the decline of the country's party system in the 1980s and to Vargas Llosa's inability to appeal to the median voter. Most analysts agree that the novelist's candidacy was undermined by his alliance with the established conservative parties, his candid and often strident advocacy of neoliberal economic policies, and the general perception that he represented Peru's mostly white, westernized elite. In contrast, Fujimori, who was perceived to be a political independent, spoke in broad generalities and skilfully positioned himself in the center of the political spectrum. Fujimori's personal characteristics, including his Asian ethnicity, also appealed to voters who longed for a clean break with the past. This article does not refute the basic tenets of this conventional wisdom, but it maintains that they became compelling only when Fujimori managed, against formidable odds, to reach the threshold of viable candidacy at the very end of the general election campaign. The chief concern here is not the relatively easy question why Fujimori won the runoff election over Vargas Llosa, but the more difficult one how he made it into the runoff in the first place. Although there is no simple answer to this question, this article argues that electoral rules--especially the majority runoff format used in the presidential contest, high district magnitude and open list proportional representation (PR) employed in congressional elections, and a constitutional provision allowing simultaneous candidacies for the presidency