President Alejandro Toledo of Peru has chided Venezuelan counterpart Hugo Chavez for "meddling" in Peru's elections with his support of an ex-army nationalist and criticism of a front-runner as "the candidate of Peru's oligarchy". "Let it be clear, Hugo Chavez is not the president of Latin America. He can have all the petrodollars he wants but that does not give him the right to destabilise the region" Toledo told local radio on Wednesday. In a speech on Tuesday in Caracas, Chavez said Lourdes Flores, Peru's pro-market, centre-right candidate for the April elections, represented "Peru's oligarchy" in a country where more than half the population lives on $1.25 a day or less. Flores appeared to antagonise Chavez over a visit she made to Venezuela in 2001, where she criticised the anti-US leader as undemocratic and compared him to Peru's disgraced ex-President Alberto Fujimori, who dissolved Congress during his hard-line 1990-2000 rule.