LIMA, Peru — Smiling his most seductive smile, Peru's "comeback candidate," leftist ex-president Alan Garcia, said Friday it was too early to write him off as an also-ran in the April 8 election.
A late spurt in opinion polls by the man who from 1985-90 led what many Peruvians say is one of their worst governments has led political analysts to suggest he could yet emerge as front-runner Alejandro Toledo's main contender.
Final opinion polls are due to be published this weekend, but surveys this week have shown Garcia gaining ground on Lourdes Flores, the right-of-center former legislator who until recently was seen as a sure-fire second-round bet.
Toledo, who says he was cheated of victory in elections last year by disgraced ex-President Alberto Fujimori, is some 10 points clear of Flores but is expected to fall short of the more than 50 percent required to win outright on polling day. Latest opinion polls put Garcia several points behind Flores.
"Don't jump to conclusions," Garcia, whose skill as an orator has helped him win votes, told reporters — breaking into English — commenting on doubts he would make it into a second-round runoff.
Tall and charismatic, Garcia was president at 35 but left office under a cloud with Peru in the grip of galloping hyperinflation with prices rising at the rate of 7,650 percent a year, rampant rebel violence and daily lines to buy food.
Pursued by allegations — which he denied — that he took $1 million in bribes during his government, he fled into exile in Colombia in 1992 after Fujimori staged a "self-coup," and only returned home in January to launch his comeback campaign.
Analysts believe some Peruvians are ashamed to admit they would vote for Garcia and his American Popular Revolutionary Alliance (APRA) party, and the ex-president himself has said he has a healthy "hidden vote". His pledges of utility tariff cuts and help for agriculture appeal to many of Peru's rural poor.
"There is going to be a rise in the last week and it will be big," Garcia said.
Toledo going for victory
Toledo, who blends leftist rhetoric and promises of "putting Peru to work" with free-market economics, has remained apparently unhurt by allegations he fathered a daughter that he has refused to recognize and tested positive for cocaine.
He is gunning for a first-round victory on April 8, slamming the allegations as a smear campaign engineered by the white elite of Peruvian politics to prevent someone of his humble Andean Indian extraction from becoming president.
Few analysts believe a first-round victory is possible, but opinion polls show that, regardless of political sympathies, a majority of Peruvians believe Toledo will end up as Peru's next president anyway. A run-off is expected in May or June.
Flores, also a free-marketeer who says she is the only candidate who can be trusted to root out corruption and attract much-needed investment, said Garcia and Toledo were conspiring against her, saying all "serious" polls showed she was still six to seven points ahead of the ex-president.
"There is political interest in the Toledo and APRA camps in selling an image of Alan Garcia overtaking Lourdes Flores and passing into the second round," she told reporters during a campaign stop in the northern town of Tumbes.
Analysts say APRA voters would be likely to back Toledo in a run-off against Flores because the party's leftist roots gave it greater affinity with Toledo's Peru Posible party.
But asked if he would concede to Toledo even if he made it into a second round, Garcia said: "For the moment, I'm not looking for a marriage . . . You have to go on until the end."