Peru's presidential front-runner vows nationalist answer to globalisation

You have to get up early to catch Peru's presidential front-runner Ollanta Humala. It's four o'clock in the morning, and I'm in Lima, trying to arrange an interview.

His advisers say he will be on the 6am plane to Cusco, the ancient Inca capital 3500m up in the Andes. If I travel with him, he will talk to me.

A few minutes before take-off, Humala, his smiling young wife and a dozen aides - all dressed in red T-shirts bearing the words "Love For Peru" - bounded on board.

"Don't talk to him now," an aide warns. "He needs sleep." I turn to an educated, middle-class Peruvian lady next to me. "The red shirts," I wonder aloud. "Is he a socialist?"

"Socialist?" the woman replies. "No. He's a Nationalist. Red and white - the colours of Peru."

A few years ago as a military leader he tried to overthrow Peru's Government. Now he is through to the second round of the presidential elections.

Win or lose, he represents two great themes in Latin America in 2006 - profound discontent that a rising tide of economic prosperity is not helping the poor, and the perpetual South American hope that a strong man might be able to solve their problems.

But his precise political affiliation is hard to pin down. He is regarded as another member of the "awkward squad" of Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, Evo Morales in Bolivia and Fidel Castro in Cuba. Awkward, at least, in the eyes of the United States. Possibly, he might join the more amenable "soft left" of Brazil, Argentina and Chile.

The guidebooks say doing something strenuous after flying from sea level in Lima to 3500m in Cusco will bring on altitude sickness.

Humala has obviously never read the guidebooks. He trots out of the airport, begins a tour, a series of speeches and walkabouts. The big rally is at dusk on the steps of Cusco's Catholic Cathedral. It's raining hard. The crowd is many thousands strong.

Humala bounds across the stage, his T-shirt sodden, telling Peruvians there's a difference between the wet weather and the world economy. When it rains, everybody gets wet. With globalisation, the wealth rains on the rich and the poor get nothing. The crowd - mainly indigenous, mainly poor - goes wild at his bombast.

I meet Humala in a Spanish colonial hotel. There's a chess set on the bar. The pieces are Incas and Conquistadors. I suggest a game, and he chooses the Incas.

So how would it change Peru, I ask Humala, if he becomes president?

"Peru has been robbed of its democracy," he says. "The economic model that's been followed has given economic growth but it hasn't allowed the country to develop. We're going to ... concentrate on policies that look toward development."

This is a neat response to those who point out that Peru's GDP has risen consistently in the past few years. Humala concedes this point, but says life for the poor is no better.

"Everyone in Peru wants change. They want a new message as well as a new messenger." I suggest his rhetoric scares off investors, most notably big American investors, and alienates his country from the United States.

"My responsibility as a Peruvian has nothing to do with Bush," he says.

"I am not at all anti-American. Peru has to work on policies in hand with the US. We need to agree on issues like the farming of the coca leaf, drug trafficking and biodiversity ... defending development in my country doesn't mean I am right-wing or left-wing. These definitions are meaningless since the end of the Cold War.

"What we have to do is make a better system by building on the institutions we have. We need to make sure the natural resources we have benefit the people. I am not saying that multinational companies should be stopped from making a profit, but there should be a ... redistribution of wealth."

So, does he agree with Chavez who suggests Bush is worse than Hitler?

"I'd just say the situations in our two countries - Venezuela and Peru - are different," Humala says. "The fact that we have an important agenda of change here doesn't mean we want to join in the ideological conflict between Venezuela and the US."

In the past 100 years, the US has undermined or overthrown about 40 Latin American governments. The US invaded Panama in 1989 to arrest the drug runner Manuel Noriega. The following year US "Contra" proxies in Nicaragua undermined the Sandinista Government of Daniel Ortega.

Despite its current focus on Iraq and Iran, the Bush Administration has begun to wake up to rising anti-Americanism in its own back yard.

"What worries me is how the US can pass the boundaries of international law and interfere physically and militarily in other countries."

So, why does Humala keep going on about the evils of globalisation, when Peru has to trade with the world to raise everyone's living standards?

"Ideological confrontations of left and right in Peru are over," he says.

"That all came to an end when the Cold War finished but the [American] empire that won has built up a process of capitalist globalisation.

"We need to defend our country from being totally globalised. They're breaking into our sovereignty and weakening our national industries. The neo-liberal model hasn't benefited normal Peruvian families."

Will he win the presidency? He certainly believes so - he promised our next game of chess would be inside the presidential palace in Lima.* Gavin Esler is a BBC presenter.

Gunning for the presidency

With 89 per cent of votes from the first round on April 9 counted, Ollanta Humala was in first place with 30.9 per cent.

Left-leaning former president Alan Garcia had 24.38 per cent and conservative Lourdes Flores edged up to 23.53 per cent.

Peruvian law mandates a second round between the two top candidates if no one gets more than 50 per cent.

Flores hopes about two thirds of an as-yet uncounted 300,000 expatriate Peruvian votes will back her party and propel her into second place for the runoff.

- INDEPENDENT, REUTERS