To the Polls

Just one year ago, after a bitterly emotional campaign, 1,730,000 Peruvians went to the polls to choose among the three top presidential candidates--and produced a deadlock so explosive that a military junta annulled the whole thing. This week, in a somewhat calmer atmosphere, the voters will try again with the same faces, the same ideologies, and the same soldiers looking over their shoulders.

Two Down. The months in between have produced only minor shifts. And yet this time they could prove decisive. Victor Raul Haya de la Torre, 68, founding father of the revolutionary-turned-reformist APRA party, still retains much of his old magic for Peru's peasants and workers. But he disillusioned many supporters in 1962 by trying to make a quick postelection deal to share power with an old enemy, ex-Dictator Manuel Odria. Important unions that once turned out a solid APRA vote have been taken over by far-leftists, who have no liking for APRA's anti-Communist platform; other voters are weary of APRA's never-ending feud with Peru's army, question the wisdom of supporting a party that might well trigger another military coup.

While Haya seems slightly weaker, so does Architect Fernando Belaunde Terry, 52, whose Accion Popular Party finished a fraction of a percentage point behind Haya last year. He now has the support of Peru's Castroites and many Communists, which will win him some votes but cost him the wealthy conservatives who filled his campaign coffers in 1962. Even more damaging to his image, after last year's election, Belaunde ordered his Congressmen-elect to renounce their seats, disguised himself as an Indian and raced off to the rebellion-prone city of Arequipa to throw up revolutionary barricades--an erratic performance that caused many moderates to question his sense of responsibility and prompted 34 of his Congressmen to bolt the party.

One Up. The surprise of the campaign is the No. 3 man, Odria, a crusty 65-year-old general whose 1948-56 reign is best remembered for economic stability, handsome public works, and jails full of political prisoners. Like everyone else, he now calls for all the reforms in the Alianza and promises what he terms "socialism within the law." All he means by it is that the state will take better care of the poor, but the message gets a lot of mileage. In 1961 Odria was hit in the face by a potato during his first campaign venture outside the capital of Lima and he never set foot in the provinces again. This time, bankrolled by Belaunde's disaffected conservatives, he is stumping the length of the country. The army obviously would not object if he won and --although not obviously--both Peru's best newspaper, La Prensa, and its prominent publisher, ex-Premier Pedro Beltran, are for him.

No sensible observer ventures to predict a sure winner. Yet as election day draws near, the experts in all three parties privately agree that Odria, onetime dictator or no, is getting the biggest campaign play. One Belaunde aide reports that his pollsters in the cities tell him "everybody's talking about Odria." Says an Odria strategist: "I can only tell you that I think it will be close."

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