MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Maoist guerrilla threaten to boycott Peruvian elections

Maoist guerrilla Shinning Path threatened to boycott Peru's general election next April and the Peruvian government promised it will combat all armed groups endangering the electoral process.

From somewhere in central Peru highlands Shinning Path, which is accused of having killed thirteen policemen in two weeks, launched its latest challenge calling on Peruvians "to combat and resist the presidential elections" of April 9.

The threat was made public in a release sent to the regional newspaper Correo in the Andean city of Huancayo and signed by Comrade Netzel, from the Shinning Path Centro-Mantaro base.

"The electoral circus is round the corner with new proscriptions, rogues, white collar thieves, television vedettes, rapists and a filthy fauna only committed to stealing, trafficking in the name of democracy with the purpose of filling the power vacuum to legitimize the situation", reads the release which then adds, "Is this what elections are for? Say NO to elections! Yes to the People's war and Yes to the Boycott!! No voting next April".

Finally it concludes that the only authentic path is "popular war, we have no other destiny but the dawn of communism".

Peruvian Minister of Interior Romulo Pizarro reacted promising that the government will do its utmost "to frontally combat the terrorist delinquents" who threaten the electoral process.

Furthermore the government declared a sixty days state of emergency and authorized the Armed Forces to militarize an extensive area in the central Peruvian jungle, where different cells of Shinning Path live in strategic alliance with drug gangs.

It was in this area that last week eight policemen were ambushed and killed by an alleged armed cell of Shinning Path. Earlier in December another five policemen were killed in southeast Peru, another area shared by the terrorists and drug traffickers.

In central highlands cities and villages graffiti with the communist hammer and sickle have been painted in walls and in other places small red banners have appeared flying from lamp and electricity posts.

Enrique Mendoza, head of Peru's Electoral Tribunal said that the elections timetable remains unmovable as originally announced.

The Shinning Path guerrilla reached its maximum activity in the eighties and early nineties costing Peru 70.000 dead and disappeared, tens of billions of losses to the economy and permanent political turmoil.

The terrorist movement was virtually annihilated under president Alberto Fujimori following the capture of Abimael Guzman or "Comrade Netzel" founder and leader of the movement, currently jailed in a naval base and facing a retrial.

Former president Fujimori is also detained but in Chile awaiting extradition to Peru to face charges of human rights abuse and corruption dating back to the time he alleged to have defeated the terrorist movement with direct intervention of the Armed Forces acting with a free hand.