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Nationwide strike threatens to undermine Peru president
- MONTE HAYES, Associated Press Writer
Wednesday, July 14, 2004
(07-14) 03:57 PDT LIMA, Peru (AP) --
Peru's president has mobilized 93,000 police to prevent violence during what is expected to be a massive nationwide strike that could paralyze the country and undermine his dwindling support.
Peruvian President Alejandro Toledo, whose approval rating is in the single digits, planned to send riot police on street patrols ahead of the strike, set for Wednesday. Army troops will guard public installations including electricity and water plants.
"The Interior Ministry has mobilized 93,000 police officers to avoid violence ... and the armed forces will protect some public sites and services," Interior Minster Reategui told foreign reporters.
Peru's largest labor confederation, led by communists, called the strike last month. Some 150 unions and other organizations were expected to participate.
Former President Alan Garcia, head of the populist Aprista party, Peru's largest opposition group, quickly backed the protest. The charismatic Garcia is an early front-runner in presidential elections scheduled for 2006.
Reategui said hundreds of soldiers would be used to free up more riot police, but would not join in street patrols.
Labor leaders called the security plan alarmist.
"We will hold security forces responsible if there is any type of repression against the marchers," labor confederation leader Juan Jose Gorriti said.
Gorriti promised that public transportation and people would not be attacked.
Political analyst Alberto Adrianzen said the government had mounted "an absurd campaign to demonize the strike."
"In a country where conflicts explode into anarchy, it is better to negotiate" with labor leaders, he said.
The unions are demanding the government decree higher wages and curb free-market economic policies.
But many see the strike as more political than economic -- aimed at undermining the authority of a president whose approval ratings have dropped to single digits since January.
Toledo came into office in July 2001 with support near 60 percent eight months after the collapse of authoritarian President Alberto Fujimori's decade-long regime in a corruption scandal. But Toledo's approval quickly eroded, with Peruvians complaining he is untrustworthy and indecisive and did not keep promises to create hundreds of thousands of jobs.
It now appears that people simply detest him on a personal level, public opinion surveys show.
The timing of the strike is particularly embarrassing for Toledo. The first round of the Copa America soccer tournament wraps up on Wednesday with defending World Cup champions Brazil facing Paraguay. In all, the competition includes teams from Costa Rica, Mexico and 10 South American nations.
The government decided to deploy a large security force after intelligence reports suggested that radical communist groups and remnants of the Shining Path guerrillas were planning to infiltrate crowds to incite violence, Reategui said.
Authorities believe subversives played a role in recent rioting in Andean provinces.
Earlier this month, hundreds of striking teachers in Ayacucho, the birthplace of the Shining Path, some 205 miles southeast of Lima, torched and looted eight buildings during a one-day riot that injured 48 people.
The Maoist-inspired Shining Path movement conducted a nationwide campaign of car bombings, political assassinations and massacres until it was largely toppled with the 1992 capture of founder Abimael Guzman.
Police also blame radical communist factions for fueling a month of violence in the Lake Titicaca town of Ilave, 565 miles southeast of Lima. A lynch mob there murdered the mayor in April amid allegations of corruption.
A group of Ilave townspeople rejecting a replacement mayor named by elections officials got a head start on the nationwide strike, launching a 48-hour protest Tuesday and blocking the highway to Bolivia with rocks.
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©2004 Associated Press