Peru's Paradox

摘要

Alejandro Toledo made history when in April 2001 he took office as Peru's first president of indige-nous descent. Recently, the 57-year-old Andean Indian set a less admirable precedent: Toledo, who turns out to have a tin ear for politics and is caught up in a corruption scandal involving one of his top aides, sank to an all-time-low approval rating of 7 percent and was forced to shuffle his cabinet for the fifth time in 30 months. Paradoxically, the president's striking unpopularity is in stark contrast to his generally able management of the economy. Peru has been Latin Americas leader in steady growth this decade, posting GDP increases of about 4 percent or more for each of the past three years. Most analysts see another year of solid growth in 2004. The Peruvian sol is stable. Lima's budget deficits have been nearly on target. Unemployment fell slightly last year. As Toledo, who has an Ph.D. in education with a specialty in international development economics from Stanford University, told Institutional Investor in late January, "I have managed the economy responsibly." (See interview, page 22.)