Ollanta Humala, a front-runner in the Peruvian presidential elections, told Sunday's Spanish press he will nationalize the Peruvian assets of multinationals, to which end it will be necessary to change the country's "neo-liberal" constitution.

The candidate for the Peruvian Union told Spanish daily "El Mundo" that he wants his country to "break the neo-colonial character and become a free and sovereign state, thanks to a nationalist plan."

This would entail the nationalization of multinational assets in Peru, but it would not be a state seizure, he explained.

"We have to negotiate this with the companies, so that they will continue investing. The state still has to safeguard their investments, so that they will keep bringing up-to-date technology."

The change would be achieved by changing the current constitution that he described as "neoliberal" and "a license for international capital to abuse Peru, which prejudices the sovereignty of the people."

Peruvians are due to elect a new president on April 9. Opinion polls say that among the candidates, no one has the 50 percent plus one vote support level needed to win the presidency in the first round of voting.

In a poll published Thursday by the Peruvian Research Company, Lourdes Flores, leader of the right-wing National Unity Party, leads the voting intentions with 28.8 percent of the vote. Humala was in second place with 18.8 percent.

Humala describes himself as a revolutionary, but he told El Mundo: "I am not a dangerous man. I am a family man that doesn't trust neo-liberalism, nor president Alejandro Toledo, nor economy minister Pedro Pablo Kuczynski, who is a United States citizen."

Source: Xinhua