PERU: Peruvians go to the polls this weekend for a back-to-the-future election that could see an unpopular former president swept into office.
Alan Garcia, who led the country during a turbulent five years in the 1980s, is ahead in the polls with surveys predicting a winning margin of between four and 20 percentage points.
But for many in the Andean nation the key to his remarkable rehabilitation is not the greater unpopularity of his opponent, former army officer Ollanta Humala.
Instead it is the shadow of Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez who has provoked outrage among many for provocatively interfering in the run-up to tomorrow's poll.
This week he labelled the country's sitting president, Alejandro Toledo, a "cry baby".
The charge came after Mr Toledo had called on the Organisation of American States to curb Mr Chavez's meddling in the election.
Both countries have already recalled their respective ambassadors in a diplomatic spat.
Mr Chavez has also described Mr Garcia as a thief, while extolling the virtues of his opponent.
That support, however, has only appeared to benefit Mr Garcia. He has gained 20 points in the past month.
Mr Garcia, a charismatic leader dubbed "Latin America's Kennedy", was elected president in 1985 at the age of 35. Within two years his presidency was mired in hyperinflation, a failing economy and a potent guerrilla movement.
In 1992, two years after leaving office, he went into exile for nine years in France and Colombia, before returning to stand again for president, narrowly losing to Mr Toledo.
Mr Garcia has a dreadful reputation in Peru, the legacy of his mismanagement of the country earning him a 61 per cent disapproval rating with today's voters. But, as he himself noted in a recent interview, he is the "least worst" choice of the two candidates.
"Fifteen per cent of the electorate will go to vote holding its nose," he said this week. He has promised he has learned from his errors and become more mature.
Mr Humala, meanwhile, represents a leap into the unknown. Like Presidents Chavez and Evo Morales in Bolivia, he has strong support among the country's rural poor: 50 per cent of Peru's population of 27.2 million live on less than $2 per day. But Mr Humala grew up in a middle-class neighbourhood, and hails from a family with a history of political involvement.
His father espoused "etnocacerismo", a dogma that exhorts the nation's "copper-skinned" natives to rise up against the white elite; his mother called for homosexuals to be shot; his brother led an armed takeover of a police station last year.
But Mr Humala has been able to capitalise on his status as a man of the people and a political outsider and in the first round of voting finished ahead, with 30.6 per cent of the vote.