The nominal chief of the Junta, General Manuel Perez Godoy, has flatly called Loeb “an Aprista,” which is tantamount now to being called an enemy of the state. He is sure to be declared “persona non grata” if he returns to Lima, and in business circles it is Loeb who draws most of the blame for the U.S. refusal to recognize the Junta. The general sentiment is that Kennedy has been “misled.” Gen. Perez is of the same mind; in a recent statement on the U.S. stand, he called the whole thing “a misunderstanding.”

Gen. Perez has impressed foreign journalists in Lima with his unique feeling for words and their fundamental meanings. He is no mean orator, and in his first statement after the takeover he explained it this way: “We have seen a fraudulent electoral process in which not even the most basic and elementary rights of the citizens have been respected. The Armed Forces have seen with pain, with anxiety, with tight lips and dry eyes, this sacrifice of our people, of our country, of our future.”

The fact that the Armed Forces had been able to dig up only 70 fraudulent ballots out of a total of some 2 million did not deter Gen. Perez from going on TV to amplify and reiterate his feelings.

'To the humble, to the forgotten worker, to the voter who has been deprived in many cases of the elementary social, economic and cultural benefits, it is now being attempted to take from him also his only hope -- that of gaining the progress and social justice he deserves, to wipe out his liberty to vote with fraud.

"We will not consent to it. A military imperative forces on us the hard obligation of assuming the functions of government that normally should be in civilian hands, in order to establish peace, order and respect for the laws that rule the republic.

“We are stirred by a great ambition to save democracy.”

Earlier in the same speech Gen. Perez had talked of “the great electoral fraud,” said “the people have been grossly cheated,” accused the National Elections Board of an attempt “to cover up this conduct,” and explained that ex-President Prado -- then languishing on a prison ship -- had showed a “lack of objectivity” for not having annulled the elections himself.

This was a little hard for some people to take, notably those 600,000 or so humbled and forgotten voters who had cast their ballots for APRA and Dr. Victor Raul Haya de la Torre. Gen. Perez drew praise, however, from those quarters where it had not been previously understood that democracy is best preserved by installing a military dictatorship. He was also admired for his eloquent attack on those who would tamper with the people's right to express themselves by means of the ballot.