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Peru Popular Action
Fernando Belaúnde Terry founded Popular Action (Acción
Popular--AP) in 1956 as a reformist alternative to the
status quo
conservative forces and the controversial APRA party.
Although
Belaúnde's message was not all that different from APRA's,
his
tactics were more inclusive and less confrontational. He
was able
to appeal to some of the same political base as APRA,
primarily
the middle class, but also to a wider base of
professionals and
white-collar workers. The AP had significant electoral
success,
attaining the presidency in 1963 and 1980, but the party
was more
of an electoral machine for the persona of Belaúnde than
an
institutionalized organization. In addition, whereas in
the 1960s
the AP was seen as a reformist party, by the 1980s--as
Peru's
political spectrum had shifted substantially to the
left--the AP
was positioned on the center-right. With the debacle of
the
second Belaúnde government, the AP fared disastrously in
1985,
attaining only 6.4 percent of the vote. In 1990 the AP
participated in the elections as a part of the
conservative
coalition behind Mario Vargas Llosa and suffered, as did
all
political parties, an electoral rejection.
Data as of September 1992
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