Peru Coalition to Support Author in Presidential Race

LIMA, Peru —  Writer Mario Vargas Llosa raised his arms in triumph at a rally where leaders of a center-right coalition announced that they will support him as their presidential candidate, newspapers said Saturday.

But Vargas Llosa did not formally respond to the offer of support from the three-party Democratic Front, which includes former President Fernando Belaunde Terry’s Popular Action party.

However, the appearance and actions at Friday night’s rally were the closest that Vargas Llosa has come to formally accepting the coalition’s candidacy in the 1990 election against the center-left government of President Alan Garcia, who has announced he will not run for reelection. On Saturday, Garcia announced that he was resigning as senior leader of the ruling American Popular Revolutionary party.

“I did not leave my writing and my books to quit working, but to save Peru from ruin,” he was quoted as telling the crowd at the rally.

Peru is undergoing its worst economic crisis in this century, with the annual inflation rate surpassing 1,200%.

The country also has been racked by a leftist insurgency that has claimed more than 12,000 lives.

Vargas Llosa, 52, Peru’s most celebrated writer, has spoken out for a year against Garcia’s government.

In the last few months, he has stepped up his campaign against the nationalization of Peru’s banks and for a reduced government role in the economy.

He also opposes the United Left, a Marxist coalition favored to win the 1990 election.

The Democratic Front’s announcement took many political observers by surprise because the coalition had said it would not name its candidate until one year before the election.

The Democratic Front is composed of the centrist Popular Action, the center-right Christian Popular Party and the Liberty Movement, a group of independents that has formed around the novelist.

“This decision was made with the soul and not with negotiation,” said Luis Bedoya, Christian Popular Party leader.

“Vargas Llosa is the man we are going to work with and support,” said Bedoya, who in the 1960s served as the mayor of Lima, Peru’s capital.