Wide-Open Election

Campaign posters plastered the stately palms on Lima's Avenida Arequipa, crusted the city's statues, napped from every wall. Neon lights blinked political slogans, and the bellow of the sound truck was heard in the land. In Peru this week, the eight-year rule of a military strongman was coming to a surprising climax in a wide-open presidential election.

President Manuel Odria did not originally plan any such free vote. An orderly general who has brought Peru a glow of prosperity by his economic reforms, Odria cherished the ambition of designating a friendly successor who would carry on his work. His plan was to offer one official candidate to the electorate for ratification, thus neatly fulfilling constitutional forms. But over the last year, step by step, the controlled election got out of control. Now, while Peru and Odria watch in suspense, three candidates are battling unpredictably for the presidency:

HERNANDO DE LAVALLE, 58, candidate of Odria's minuscule Restoration Party, is a corporation lawyer (retained by almost every big U.S.-owned firm in Peru), banker and hard-working millionaire.

MANUEL PRADO, 67, candidate of his own personalist party and a former (1939-45) President, is the archetype of the Peruvian oligarch, wealthy from banking, real estate and industry. Sitting amidst the priceless antiques in his mansion, he says: "I am the man of the people."

FERNANDO BELAUNDE TERRY, 43, likewise the candidate of a party of his friends, is one of Peru's top architects. He is running on what, for Peru, is a hot-eyed liberal platform: land reform, unfettered trade unionism and public housing.

Balance of Power. But neither work nor wealth nor social plans are going to win the election in Peru. What probably will tip the balance is the under-the-surface support of APRA, the only real political party in the country. Ironically enough, APRA (a word in its own right in Peru, formed by the initials of the American Popular Revolutionary Alliance) is the party that Odria overthrew and outlawed in 1948. But APRA's voting strength seems to have survived.

The single candidate that Odria at first proposed could have ignored APRA. But the mere announcement of elections a year ago stirred a couple of hopeful candidates to enter the race. At a boisterous rally for one of them in Arequipa in December, Odria's police panicked and fired rifles, wounding ten men. To stem the nationwide protest, Odria had to give amnesty to Apristas and change the election law to permit vote-counting in public at the polling places in the presence of opposition observers, instead of secretly, as in the past. A real election became a possibility; other candidates earnestly got into the fight. Odria, who used to say that "it has been shown beyond any doubt that it is impossible to coexist with APRA," began to woo APRA's vote himself.

This new and sudden cordiality paid Odria one quick dividend: APRA, with plenty of reason for joining any revolt against the dictator, gave no backing at all to the abortive February uprising of army officers at Iquitos (TIME, Feb. 27). Odria's negotiations with APRA grew serious. He offered the party eventual legality and the immediate right to run candidates for Congress if APRA would support his chosen successor.

APRA agreed. Odria chose Lavalle, and most other candidates dropped out. Only Prado and Belaunde stayed on as formal opposition candidates. By mid-May, when a mostly Aprista throng of 35,000 cheered Lavalle in Lima, Odria seemed on the verge, after all, of electing his man.

Deal that Failed. Only a detail remained : Odria had to get Cabinet approval for a decree permitting APRA to run candidates for Congress. He failed. The military officers in the Cabinet, whose recent prosperity might invite the scrutiny of a pro-APRA Congress, refused to sign. With that, the deal was off and the election was thrown wide open.

Officially, APRA now supports no candidate; to support Prado or Belaunde would be to invite the army to nullify the election on the grounds that an "illegal" party elected the winner. But Apristas individually can still vote--and APRA has told them to do so. Candidate Prado would welcome these votes, but the Apristas are cool to him. Instead, they have rallied to Belaunde. One night last week 60,000 citizens turned out for him.

As the campaign drew to an end last week, the fact was that Strongman Odria's election had turned out to be so wide open that not even he could pick the winner.

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