Garcia regains Peru presidency in runoff (6.5…

By MONTE HAYES, Associated Press Writer
1 hour, 12 minutes ago

LIMA, Peru - Former President Alan Garcia defeated an ex-army nationalist in Peru's runoff election on Sunday, a stunning comeback for a politician whose first term ended in economic ruin and rebel violence.
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Garcia's victory was a blow to Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, who had endorsed his rival Ollanta Humala, a political upstart deemed dangerous to democracy by many Peruvians.
"We've rescued independence," Garcia, Peru's president from 1985-90, told thousands of ebullient supporters even before the official results were announced.
He said voters had sent an overwhelming message to Chavez that they rejected the "strategy of expansion of a militaristic, retrograde model that he has tried to impose in South America."
Chavez has already extended his regional influence in gaining a loyal ally with the December election of Evo Morales as Bolivia's president. Like Morales, Humala had pledged to punish a corrupt political establishment and redistribute wealth to his country's poor Indian and mestizo majority.
Garcia held an insurmountable lead of 55.5 percent against 44.5 percent for Humala with 77.3 percent of the vote counted, said the head of the electoral agency, Magdalena Chu.
The margin was expected to shrink, however, as Humala's support is strongest in rural areas where vote reporting is slower. Unofficial partial ballot counts by two respected polling companies and a citizen's watchdog group all gave Garcia more than 52 percent of the vote.
There were no signs that Humala's followers might take to the streets to protest, as some had feared if he lost, and his spokeswoman said he had not conceded and would await final results.
Humala won big in the heavily Indian southern Andes but his radical rhetoric frightened many in the more industrialized northern coast and in Lima, the capital, where Garcia said he had won 65 percent of the vote.
The bitterly fought election included street clashes and virulent exchanges of slurs, including from Chavez, who exacerbated the ill will by vigorously endorsing Humala and calling Garcia a crook.
At one point, Garcia was hit in the face by an egg, leaving a nasty bruise. The attack, in the highland city of Cuzco, a stronghold for Humala, was followed hours later by a shootout involving supporters of the two rivals.
In the final days of campaigning, election observers from the Organization of American States urged the two campaigns to tone down the rhetoric and avoid violence.
Humala, a 43-year-old retired military man, spooked upper- and middle-class Peruvians by attacking the established parties as corrupt and unresponsive to the needs of the poor. He vowed to write a new constitution stripping them of power.
Garcia, 57, adroitly turned the race into a referendum on the Chavez factor, depicting Humala as an aspiring despot who would fall into lockstep with the Venezuelan's populist economics and Cuba-friendly anti-Americanism.

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