LETTER FROM LIMA: A cartoon in Peru's daily newspaper La Republica on Monday showed a ramshackle hut, its tin roof held down with rocks. The speech bubble from inside the doorless entrance read: "I don't wonder if Toledo will last until 2006. I wonder if we will."
President Alejandro Toledo's administration is in crisis this week, following a resignation (Luis Solari, a founder member of Peru Posible), a threatened resignation (Gloria Helfer, a high-ranking party member) and a bizarre scandal involving the first lady, Eliane Karp Toledo, and, well, "shock troops" disguised as gardeners.
"We were contracted as cleaning operatives with duties in the gardens of the Palace of Government, but we never did work like that," explained beans-spiller Raul Elizabal, a thick-set, balding, self-confessed bully.
Instead he, and an undisclosed number of others like him, acted as security men at the first lady's non-governmental Pacha Foundation, an organisation that oversees development projects for indigenous Peruvians.
When the "grupos de choque" weren't doing that, they were carrying out orders to physically attack outspoken critics of the Toledo administration. Judging from newspaper images, the preferred method to do so was a severe blow to the eye that later required stitches.
Meanwhile in Lima, two separate but equally angry protests are underway outside the Ministry for Work and the Ministry for Women and Social Development.
In the first case, 2,000 workers represented by three unions are demanding compensation for unfair dismissal. In the second, 200 women who run food kitchens in the city's breathtakingly poor suburbs want to know why their supplies of rice have been cut off.
"We have been cooking without rice since September 8th, said co-ordinator Rosa Castillo Reyes. "We are starting to trust in a positive outcome but we don't want to trust it."
A report described the political situation here this week as one of "disorder and chaos", yet in an interview with last Sunday's the Washington Post, President Toledo's glib response to questions about his competence was: "I'm an economist, not a miracle worker."
With such pessimistic comments as this, it is small wonder that Toledo's popularity stands at 10 per cent, with 95 per cent of Peruvians believing his government is corrupt, according to poll results that were released last Tuesday (30.3 per cent say "very corrupt", 47.1 per cent say "corrupt" and 17.3 per cent say "a bit corrupt").
Before he came to office in June 2001, Toledo made much of his humble origins to win votes. The former shoeshine boy turned World Bank consultant via Stanford University was simply a "cholo", or indigenous Peruvian, at heart, he insisted. Their plight was seared in his memory. He promised them the one thing they were crying out for; "mas trabajo".
But three years later there is no sign of "more work". While Toledo's macroeconomic policies have made him, his family and friends rich, and inspired praise from IMF chief, the former Spanish economy minister Rodrigo Rato, the situation for indigenous Peruvians is no better.
It wasn't until Toledo made faux pas such as donating computers to schools without electricity that the people of Peru began to doubt in their new leader. Bearing in mind Toledo's two predecessors, one can only imagine their dismay.
Alberto Fujimori and Alan Garcia both left office in disgrace; the former fleeing to his parents' homeland of Japan four years ago to avoid charges of kidnapping and murder, the latter leaving behind a bankrupt country with 7,500 percent inflation and uncontrollable left-wing guerilla violence in 1990.
You only have to visit Lima - and surprisingly few tourists do - to see the legacy of their failings.
At Mass in Our Lady of Mercy's city centre church last Sunday, the priest urged his packed congregation to pray for more work. "It is the only thing that will prevent our young people from moving to richer countries and without them we will always be poor," he insisted.
The people here hawk everything and anything to turn a sol. So far we have been offered T-shirts, maps, day trips, chocolate mints, toothbrushes, arthritis cream (we're 26 years of age!), home-made cake and roasted corn. One man told jokes on a bus in the hope of earning a donation for his efforts. (Q: What is the only creature that moves after it is dead? A: A chicken on a rotating spit.)
Taxi man Luis, father-of-four, grandfather-of-eight, and a Capricorn, he adds, also works as a bus driver to make ends meet. Without a job on the side, he can only hope to make 400 sols a month, or less than €100. He spends much of the journey talking about food; he hasn't had time to eat since breakfast and it's now 11 p.m.
As we travel outside the city, candidates for the 2006 elections already have their names freshly painted 20ft high on the walls.
"Vote Fujimori," says one. "Vote Alan Garcia," says another.
With those options perhaps a better slogan would be, "don't vote at all".