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Author Topic: Peru: Election campaign in high gear
rici
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posted 14 March 2006 12:19 PM      Profile for rici     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
I've been meaning to post about Peru's upcoming elections for a while, in case anyone is interested.

Rather than blather on like I usually do, I'll just post some links for now (in English).

The latest poll, this weekend, shows Lourdes Flores and Ollanta Humala running basically neck-and-neck, closely followed by Alan García. BBC's Michael Voss has some coverage (although I think some of his analysis is a bit simplistic.)

It's hard to get an unbiased view of Ollanta Humala, but Ángel Páez's article for IPS seems pretty good to me. (Páez is head of investigative journalism for La República, which is quite a good Peruvian newspaper.)


From: Lima, Perú | Registered: Jun 2002  |  IP: Logged
M. Spector
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posted 26 March 2006 02:31 AM      Profile for M. Spector   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Erasing Indigenous Peru
quote:
Rural peasants, unemployed, retired, and migrants can all be fit, with some airbrushing, into the logic of capitalism. Indigenous cultures cannot. They are a threat. They do not want to sell the land where they live and work, the rivers where they fish and drink, their knowledge of medicinal plants, their lives. They are not for sale. This is why the nation states that guard transnational capitalism try to eliminate them. This is why the intellectuals that strive to bestow legitimacy on transnational capitalism either push them into a ghetto of the past or simply leave them out of the discussion. Like the communist dictator in Milan Kundera's novel, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, who erases people who no longer fit into the official ideology from photographs. Erases people from history. Erases people.

U.S. Meddling in Peruvian Presidential Race?
quote:
Something smells funny about the recent denunciation of maverick Peruvian presidential candidate Ollanta Humala for alleged human rights violations. Before the accusations, Humala was riding high as the leading candidate in Peru's presidential elections. Investigations illustrate that Humala's accusers are subsidized by the US Government funded Agency for International Development (USAID) and the National Endowment for Democracy (NED). Washington may be interfering in this election to protect its own interests.

[ 26 March 2006: Message edited by: M. Spector ]


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a lonely worker
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posted 26 March 2006 02:40 AM      Profile for a lonely worker     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Definitely another Latin American election to watch! Please keep us updated and thanks for the excellent info.

Now if only some of this energy could come our way instead of pointless fights about why neo-libs are better than neo-cons ...


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Hawkins
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posted 26 March 2006 10:29 AM      Profile for Hawkins     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Are there any American consulting firms in Peru?

I just watched "Our Brand is Crisis". Even the 'progressives' of the US back the right wing horse. Or they are stupid to think every candidate in Lat. America is 'progressive' because they have to talk to the poor.


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Red Albertan
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posted 26 March 2006 10:50 AM      Profile for Red Albertan        Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
A friend of mine who lives in Lima is terrified of Ollanta Humala. He says that Humala is outspoken against gays on TV, and that gays are a problem he wishes to eradicate. My friend fears that his life is in danger if Humala becomes President. Has anyone else heard anything like this or any information on this allegation?
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Hephaestion
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posted 26 March 2006 11:08 AM      Profile for Hephaestion   Author's Homepage        Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Originally posted by Red Albertan:

Has anyone else heard anything like this or any information on this allegation?



Not so far, but I'd appreciate any info if you come across it...

And rici, as usual, thank you for the Southern Perspective. It is much appreciated. (I shall come back to read the links at this thread later.)

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Red Albertan
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posted 26 March 2006 11:28 AM      Profile for Red Albertan        Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Originally posted by Hephaestion:

Not so far, but I'd appreciate any info if you come across it...


Unfortunately, despite some searches on the net, I haven't come up with anything that sounds close to what my friend is saying, but not being 'on the ground' in Peru, it is impossible for me to get a better view of the real picture. Another gay friend in Lima hasn't mentioned anything of that sort.

I don't want to doubt my friends word, but at the same time I thought I should have heard or read something along those lines from another source. Maybe rici can shed more light on that for us.


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rici
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posted 26 March 2006 01:28 PM      Profile for rici     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
It wasn't Ollanta who attacked gays. It was his mother, Elena Tasso. In a press interview last week, she said: "I bet you that with two violators [of children] shot to death, there would be no more violations... and with two homosexuals shot, there would not be so much immorality in the street."

During the same interview, Ollanta's father, Isaac Humala, said that if he were president, he would free Victor Polay and Abimael Guzmán, the leaders of MRTA and Sendero Luminoso respectively, both of whom are in prison for terrorism.

These declarations have been used by Ollanta's opponents to discredit him; the latter rather more than the former, as has a declaration by his brother, Antauro Humala, that he would shut down news media.

Ollanta himself has dissociated himself from all three of these statements, saying that it is he who is running and not his family.

Actually, his older brother Ulises is running against him, having taken over the reins of Antauro's party. Antauro himself cannot run because he is in jail for leading an assault against a police station a bit over a year ago, in which several hostages were killed. Two weeks ago, Antauro said he would vote for Ollanta, as a strategic vote.

Ollanta's father, Isaac, was a well-known marxist professor (apparently, Mario Vargas Llosa was one of his students) before becoming a commercial lawyer. His communism, as far as I can tell, was of the Stalinist variety. Later on, he formulated the doctrine of "etnocacerismo", a sort of ethnic nationalism. The "etno" refers to his concept of the "cobrizo" (copper) race, essentially the Andean peoples. The "cacerismo" part comes from Andrés Avelino Cáceres, a military hero of the war with Chile and president of Perú in three brief episodes (1883-1885, 1886, 1894-1895). He was a brilliant soldier and a terrible president; the part of his thinking which Isaac Humala attempts to capture seems to be his anti-chilean nationalism.

Isaac and Elena set about on a long-term project to take over the government of Perú (a "family project", Elena said). All of their children (except Ulises) were given Quechua names and trained from an early age to be future leaders. Ulises, the oldest, was encouraged in an academic career (he was educated at the Sorbonne, in France, where he lived for more than a decade) while Ollanta and Antauro were sent to the military. Isaac has said that he believed that etnocacerismo could only take power through a coup, and that he needed two sons in the military in case one didn't make it; Elena said that Ollanta was the chosen leader and Antauro was sent to the military to teach him discipline.

The Etnocacerist party is organized on strictly military lines; its militants are "reservistas" and wear pseudomilitary clothing. This webpage is in Spanish but the pictures speak for themselves: Reservistas Etnocaceristas.

Ollanta Humala came to national attention in October, 2000, in the dying days of the Fujimori government. On the day that Vladimiro Montesinos fled the country, Ollanta staged an uprising in a small Andean community, holding a police station hostage and demanding the resignation of Fujimori. The uprising certainly did not contribute to the downfall of Fujimori, but it was relatively peaceful to the extent that an armed hostage-taking can be peaceful and there was little desire to prosecute an anti-Fujimorista in the general euphoria that followed Fujimori's downfall. Ollanta was eventually pardoned, and sent first to France and then to South Korea as a military attaché.

In December, 2004, he was forcibly retired from the military. Shortly afterwards, Antauro (still in the Armed Forces) staged the rather bloodier rebellion for which he is still in jail. Ollanta described this as an error, and the two brothers fell out; Ollanta started his own political party, the Nationalist Party of Perú. (However, he is running as a candidate of the UPP, a centre-left political party which was already registered with the electoral authorities.)

Ollanta Humala's campaign has attracted the support of a part of the Peruvian left (and, it must be said, a number of opportunists of undefined politics), and has worked hard to try to set aside the suspicions which his family history might arouse. A few days after his parents' rather dramatic interview with the press, he visited them, visibly angry, and apparently ordered them to keep quiet until the elections were over. He refuses to respond to questions about any family member, saying only that he cares about his family but does not agree with all of their politics.

There are (at least) four GLBT candidates running for congress in this election, three of them for the Socialist Party and one for the New Left Movement. Neither of these parties has much popular support, unfortunately, possibly because of their inability to create a unified electoral organization. (There is another left wing grouping as well, which also lacks support.) Susel Paredes (who is running for the Socialist Party) probably would receive enough votes to qualify for a seat in Lima, but it is doubtful that the party will receive enough votes nationwide to achieve the 4% electoral threshold. That's a shame in my opinion. (More info in Spanish: Diario de Lima Gay Susel Paredes campaign


From: Lima, Perú | Registered: Jun 2002  |  IP: Logged
Red Albertan
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posted 26 March 2006 03:19 PM      Profile for Red Albertan        Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Thanks much for that rici, as I am interested in what is going on in Peru, having been there and having several friends there.

quote:
Originally posted by rici:
It wasn't Ollanta who attacked gays. It was his mother, Elena Tasso.

Yes, in the meantime a friend of mine from Argentina had told me the same.

quote:
During the same interview, Ollanta's father, Isaac Humala, said that if he were president, he would free Victor Polay and Abimael Guzmán, the leaders of MRTA and Sendero Luminoso respectively, both of whom are in prison for terrorism.

I mean, I am nothing like my parents or siblings - so maybe he isn't either-, but with a family like that, I would want to make damn sure that Ollanta doesn't share those views before voting for him.

quote:
These declarations have been used by Ollanta's opponents to discredit him; the latter rather more than the former, as has a declaration by his brother, Antauro Humala, that he would shut down news media.

I think there is a certain amount of validity in the charges, unless there is clear personal distancing from such statements, in both word as well as reputation.

quote:
Ollanta himself has dissociated himself from all three of these statements, saying that it is he who is running and not his family.

What is your assessment? Is the dissociation real, or only for purposes of the election?

quote:
Ollanta's father, Isaac, was a well-known marxist professor (apparently, Mario Vargas Llosa was one of his students) before becoming a commercial lawyer. His communism, as far as I can tell, was of the Stalinist variety. Later on, he formulated the doctrine of "etnocacerismo", a sort of ethnic nationalism. The "etno" refers to his concept of the "cobrizo" (copper) race, essentially the Andean peoples. The "cacerismo" part comes from Andrés Avelino Cáceres, a military hero of the war with Chile and president of Perú in three brief episodes (1883-1885, 1886, 1894-1895). He was a brilliant soldier and a terrible president; the part of his thinking which Isaac Humala attempts to capture seems to be his anti-chilean nationalism.

I am a Socialist, but I am not a racist, and this man sounds like a racist. The worlds problems will not be solved by moving from white-mans-racism to native-mans-racism. It will merely repeat the same devastations and hatreds. Unless a man or woman embraces the universal brotherhood and equality of all men and women of all colors and nationalities, I cannot support those people in their quest for power. All human life is of equal value, and all human life should be treated with equal respect, and we should build this world together for the good of all of us, and despise and shun wars and those who foment or try to foment them, and who build barriers instead of bridges.

quote:
Isaac has said that he believed that etnocacerismo could only take power through a coup, and that he needed two sons in the military in case one didn't make it; Elena said that Ollanta was the chosen leader and Antauro was sent to the military to teach him discipline. The Etnocacerist party is organized on strictly military lines; its militants are "reservistas" and wear pseudomilitary clothing. This webpage is in Spanish but the pictures speak for themselves: Reservistas Etnocaceristas.

OMG. That is so reminiscent of "National Socialism", it is totally scary.

quote:
Ollanta Humala's campaign has attracted the support of a part of the Peruvian left (and, it must be said, a number of opportunists of undefined politics), and has worked hard to try to set aside the suspicions which his family history might arouse. A few days after his parents' rather dramatic interview with the press, he visited them, visibly angry, and apparently ordered them to keep quiet until the elections were over. He refuses to respond to questions about any family member, saying only that he cares about his family but does not agree with all of their politics.

Personally I think I would play it safe and keep a good distance from the entire family.

quote:
There are (at least) four GLBT candidates running for congress in this election, three of them for the Socialist Party and one for the New Left Movement. Neither of these parties has much popular support, unfortunately, possibly because of their inability to create a unified electoral organization. (There is another left wing grouping as well, which also lacks support.) Susel Paredes (who is running for the Socialist Party) probably would receive enough votes to qualify for a seat in Lima, but it is doubtful that the party will receive enough votes nationwide to achieve the 4% electoral threshold. That's a shame in my opinion.

I thank you very much for this info. It sheds a lot of light on the situation, in sight of which I would say that to be sure, both of the Humalas should be avoided in favor of better and more moderate candidates.


From: the world is my church, to do good is my religion | Registered: May 2005  |  IP: Logged
rici
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posted 26 March 2006 10:09 PM      Profile for rici     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Let me point out that I'm a foreigner living in Perú, and I'm trying very hard to not express an opinion on this election (although I have one).

I just wanted to say a couple of things about the zmag articles M. Spector linked to.

The first one, by John Gibler, is simply illusion. If Mr. Gibler has ever been in Perú, he somehow failed to remove the blindfold. The appeal to romantic indigenism is very emotional and all that, but has no correspondence with reality. Unlike Bolivia and Ecuador, Perú has neither an indigenous movement nor a significant indigenous population, in the sense of a population which identifies itself as indigenous. More than 90% of Peruvians spontaneously identify themselves as "peruvian"; if pushed, they may say that others would describe them as "criollo" or "cholo" (this comes from a massive study conducted by Sinesio López and his students some years ago, but it accords with my experiences.) The only prominent romantic indigenist I know of in Perú is Eliane Karp, the Belgian wife of the current president (who, by the way, is about as cholo as you can get, despite having a doctorate from Harvard; he grew up dirt-poor in an Andean village). Dra. Karp is a very intelligent liberal with a personal commitment to the indigenous cause (she speaks Quechua), and epitomizes a kind of liberal European "noble savage"ry which has always driven me crazy.

I could go on about this but it might not be appropriate, and I might lose my cool even more.

Mario Vargas Llosa is a good writer, possibly even a great writer, but he should, in my humble opinion, stay out of politics. The 1990 campaign has been extensively analyzed (probably the best book about it is called "How to lose an election") and there are a lot of reasons why he wasn't elected, starting with the fact that the far right does not win fair elections in Perú. It is indicative that Alberto Fujimori's slogan in that election, apparently convincing, was "A Peruvian like you"; both of Fujimori's parents were Japanese (making him eligible for Japanese citizenship), a fact which is pretty obvious from a photo of him. I'm not saying that racism doesn't exist in Perú, but in my experience it is quite a bit different from the racism you encounter in other Andean and South American countries. There is certainly discrimination against peasants.

There is an actual indigenous population in Perú, in the Amazon region. There are a number of different indigenous peoples, including a few who have been quite resistant to contact. They are desperately poor; their lands have been invaded by pipelines, roads and illegal wood harvest, and possibly by the drug trade. There are some first steps towards organization. However, they are not a political force and account for a tiny proportion of the Peruvian population.

Jeremy Bigwood attempts to pin Humala's yet-to-be-confirmed defeat on US intervention, as well as Peruvian racism. I'll start with the second: I have not heard anyone describe Humala disdainfully as a cholo. Of course, I don't have many contacts amongst the aging and diminished pitucaría, so it is possible that people like the father of Lourdes Flores would use such a description. (In 2001, Sr. Flores famously described Alejandro Toledo, who went on to win the election, as the "camelid of Harvard", a phrase which cost his daughter dearly, and to which Eliane Karp responded with a barb about "Miraflores snobs".)

Whether the charges against Humala are true or not is impossible to say. It's clear that he was in charge of an army base in 1992 in a part of Perú where there was a lot of well-documented repression of the populace, both by Sendero and by the Armed Forces. A number of witnesses have come forward, and an investigation is underway, but without much enthusiasm. The fact is, the Armed Forces do not much like investigations into charges of violation of human rights. There is no doubt that the US has donated money to various human rights organizations in Perú, but the the organizations in question are honourable. I know Pancho Soberón quite well, and no-one who knows him would ever think that he could possibly be bought. (Also, I checked the declassified documents I could find, and they do not refer to debriefing of Coordinadora members, but Mr. Bigwood probably has access to more documents. They do refer to occasions in which the US embassy talked officially to ICRC and the Coordinadora.)

Nonetheless, false accusations are a staple of Latin American politics. It is possible that the witnesses who have come forward were put up to it by someone. If the Peruvian right-wing wanted to do that, they would not requires US help.

Regardless of all that, since the investigation started, the charges have dropped out of the public eye, and there is actually no evidence that they hurt Humala's campaign at all. Only one poll showed Humala leading in the polls when the accusation was made, but all the polls (Perú is addicted to polls) showed his support steadily increasing, and currently all of the polls show him to be in first place, although the margins vary, with between 26 and 34 per cent of the vote. Interestingly, polls generally show that Humala is thought to be more authoritarian than his opponents, but that is treated as a positive by his supporters.


From: Lima, Perú | Registered: Jun 2002  |  IP: Logged
Heavy Sharper
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posted 27 March 2006 02:45 AM      Profile for Heavy Sharper        Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
If Humala comes from a Stalinist family, I'm not sure how badly I want him to win.

At least the Chavez gang is Trotskyist and democratic socialist. :-)


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rici
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posted 27 March 2006 10:27 PM      Profile for rici     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Couple of short cuts:

Own goal. As if Ollanta Humala hasn't had enough problem with his family, today he had to deal with his party. Party spokesperson Daniel Abugattás was forced to apologize after an interview with him published yesterday in Domingo. In a letter made public today, he said he "lamented" having used an "unfortunate expression" to describe Eliane Karp, wife of President Alejandro Toledo. (The expression was "hija de puta".)

Another day, another poll. Perú has more pollsters per square inch than any other nation in the world, I swear. Hardly a day goes by without a new poll appearing. Today's poll, conducted by Apoyo which is a reasonably reputable polling company, considered to be an ally of the business class, shows Humala with 33% of first-round support, followed by Lourdes Flores with 27% and Alan García with 22%. In a second round between Flores and Humala, the poll predicts a narrow victory by Flores, 53% to 47%.

And a poll for every taste. Saturday's poll was released by IDICE, generally considered to have a relationship with APRA (the centre-left party headed by Alan García). It also showed Humala leading with 27%, followed by García with 24% and Flores with 22%. (The numbers are not quite comparable; the IDICE poll includes blank votes while the Apoyo poll excludes them. Both place the blank votes at about 8%.)

Waiting for Lloyd. The Organization of American States (OAS) election observation team is starting to set up its Lima headquarters. Mission Subchief Moisés Benamor (of Venezuela) arrived last night, and Mission Chief Lloyd Axworthy (who has quite a good reputation in Perú) is expected to arrive in the next couple of days. The team will have 80 members from a variety of countries, working out of Lima and seven regional offices.


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M. Spector
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posted 30 March 2006 01:16 PM      Profile for M. Spector   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Populist Humala is poised to follow wave of socialist electoral wins in Latin America
quote:
Mr. Humala said he would suspend eradication of coca, the prime ingredient for cocaine, which Washington has spent millions of dollars trying to get rid of in the Andes. He suggested baking 27 million loaves of bread from coca leaves every day for school breakfasts.

Mr. Humala has also called for a renegotiation of oil and gas contracts with foreign investors, and promised to call a constituent assembly to draft a new constitution, something Mr. Chavez also did....

Mr. Humala wants to raise taxes and redistribute income to the poor. Critics, however, say that will scare off foreign investment and that a more prudent strategy would be to trim the bloated bureaucracy and diversify the economy. About 90 per cent of Peru's budget goes to public-sector salaries and debt servicing.



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rici
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posted 30 March 2006 03:01 PM      Profile for rici     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Sigh.

I suppose I should give up on believing that the international press can get their facts right about Perú. I should probably write a letter to the G&M.

1) The UNDP poll. The G&M says:

quote:

No wonder a recent United Nations report found major disillusionment in Peru with the political system. Only 5 per cent of those surveyed felt democracy was working well, 73.2 favoured authoritarianism and 90.4 think politicians are to blame for the demise of democracy.

I have this poll in front of me. It's very comprehensive and very interesting, and the accompanying analysis is quite good. It's not (yet) available in English, I don't believe.

The survey shows that a majority, 52.8% of Peruvians, say that democracy is "necesarry to achieve progress". Another 13% say that they are indifferent to democracy, and 12.9% (not 73.8%) say that they would prefer an authoritarian government. Those figures are not fantastic, but hardly as bleak as the G&M reports.

The groups which showed the highest support for democracy are youth 18-29 (57.8%), Lima residents (68.2%), those completing at least 75% of public education (69.4%), those in the top earning bracket (76.1%).

The groups which showed the highest support for authoritarian government are men (15.4% compared to 10.7% of women); residents of the Cusco-Apurímac-Madre de Dios region (20.9%); those completing at least 50% of public education (13.8%) and those in the top two earning brackets (15%).

Interestingly, of the tiny number of people who identify themselves as "of European descent", 22% favour authoritarian government, and 59.4% think democracy is necessary.

So I'd say there are a couple of different ideas about what an authoritarian government might be.

I have no idead where the G&M got that 73.8% figure from. In another question, people were asked whether Perú is currently democratic; 70.6% said that it is, but that democracy doesn't work very well. 24.4% said that it isn't, and only 5% figure that it is a well-function democracy. There is some variation on these figures by education and social class, and rather more by geography -- some regions are much more optimistic than others.

Indeed, 90% say that politicians are to blame for the poor functioning of democracy. 48.6% say that people are to blame, and 63.7% say that the laws are bad. (These were independent questions.)

I could go on, it's an interesting survey (and they interviewed a lot of people, more than 11,000, so the results are probably quite good), but it would be of limited interest here, I think.

Re: coca being baked into bread.

It was actually the party (now ex-)spokesman Daniel Abugattás who suggested using coca powder in bread, but Ollanta hasn't denied the idea as far as I know. (It's not necessarily a bad idea.) The suggestion was to use a few grams of coca powder as a nutritional supplement, not to bake bread out of coca flour.

Re: the "coup"

I've seen this claim about Ollanta Humala organizing a coup against Fujimori many times. It was hardly a coup. He and his brother, then at an army base in southern Perú, took Brigadier General Carlos Bardales hostage, and then with about 50-70 soliders stormed a nearby mining village where they took a few more hostages, employees of the Southern Copper Company. None of the hostages were harmed.

Humala said the hostages would be held until a legitimate government was put in place. Fujimori's government was already falling to pieces; almost at the precise moment as the uprising, the discredited former security chief Vladimiro Montesinos fled to Venezuela (indeed, there were accusations at the time that the Humala uprising was intended to divert attention from Montesinos' flight, although I suspect that is not true); and within a few weeks, Fujimori himself fled to Japan. None of that had anything to do with the Humala's uprising, and it is a discredit to the massive (and peaceful) social movement of rejection of Fujimori to suggest otherwise.

In any event, when a largish military force arrived at the end of October, the Humalas (and the seven soldiers who remained) surrendered without a struggle. They remained in jail until they were pardoned a couple of months later.

Whatever it was, it was hardly a coup.

[ 30 March 2006: Message edited by: rici ]


From: Lima, Perú | Registered: Jun 2002  |  IP: Logged
M. Spector
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posted 30 March 2006 06:09 PM      Profile for M. Spector   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
This would not be the first time, as I have noted elsewhere, that the Globe's Marina Jiménez has presented doubtful facts.
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Hawkins
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posted 30 March 2006 06:55 PM      Profile for Hawkins     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
The UNDP report 'Democracy in Latin America' is available in english here.
PDF on the right.

I have used it for research before, its a pretty interesting document (comprehensive polls and the academic analysis). I don't know why you would have to cock up the numbers to make a point, I thought they were bleak enough as it is. Maybe making it sound a lot worse might move the blame away from poor social programs and failing institutions to the 'Latin Americans just can't handle democracy' argument.


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rici
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posted 30 March 2006 08:52 PM      Profile for rici     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Hawkins: that's a different report. However, it is also very interesting.

Attitudes towards democracy vary from country to country (currently, Venezuelans are more optimistic about democracy than most other South American countries, for example). Although there is an overall tendency for people with more education to support democracy more, that is not always true; there is a significant segment (although aging, fortunately) of the Chilean wealthy who still pine for the days of Pinochet.

In the case of Peru, returning to the thread topic , you find support for authoritarian government both amongst the poor and uneducated, and amongst the rich and educated. I believe these are different phenomena. What is certain, as a number of observers have pointed out in the current election campaign, is that there is no empirical reason for a poor peasant to believe in democracy; by and large, they have benefited more from authoritarian regimes than from democratic ones (and Perú has not had a lot of democratic regimes).

Martín Tanaka ironically observes in one of his books that all of the extensions of suffrage (to women, to 18-21 year olds, to the illiterate) were imposed by dictatorships. However, that needs also to be taken in context; the natural ruling party of Peru, starting from its foundation around 1930, was APRA, the traditional party of the Peruvian left, and APRA was never allowed to govern after winning any election.


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sgm
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posted 30 March 2006 09:09 PM      Profile for sgm     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Note this story from today's National Post, warning of dire consequences to Canadian mining interests:
quote:
Canadian miners operating in Peru could face upheaval after the left-wing front-runner in the country's presidential election yesterday pledged to introduce tax changes he described as a "21st-century nationalization."

Vancouver-based Teck Cominco Ltd. and Toronto-based Falconbridge Ltd. and Barrick Gold Corp. are among Canadian companies with interests in large operations in Peru.

Opinion polls name Ollanta Humala as the leader coming into Peru's election on April 9. A run-off is scheduled for May 7.

In an interview with the Financial Times, Mr. Humala said he wants to renegotiate mining agreements to ensure companies pay more taxes and royalties.

He singled out Yanacocha, a gold mine in northern Peru operated by Denver-based Newmont Gold Corp. The U.S. company has called its 51% stake in Yanacocha the "crown jewel" of its international mining portfolio.

In 2000, Mr. Humala and his brother, Antauro, were part of a group of 50 soldiers who seized a copper mine owned by Arizona-based Southern Copper Corp. to protest government corruption.

"We won't revise all contracts, but we will change those with companies that aren't paying taxes and royalties," he said yesterday. He didn't say how a Humala administration would go about the changes, but stressed: "We will not act outside the law."



From: I have welcomed the dawn from the fields of Saskatchewan | Registered: Apr 2004  |  IP: Logged
N.Beltov
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posted 30 March 2006 09:26 PM      Profile for N.Beltov   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
UBC's Poli Sci Department has a Peruvian election website. UBC Site on Peruvian election 2006
From: Vancouver Island | Registered: May 2003  |  IP: Logged
rici
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posted 30 March 2006 10:10 PM      Profile for rici     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Originally posted by sgm, quoting the Notional Pest:
He singled out Yanacocha, a gold mine in northern Peru operated by Denver-based Newmont Gold Corp. The U.S. company has called its 51% stake in Yanacocha the "crown jewel" of its international mining portfolio.

Some info on Yanacocha. It's not just about who owns the mine.

Choropampa: The Price of Gold (a film about it)

[ 30 March 2006: Message edited by: rici ]


From: Lima, Perú | Registered: Jun 2002  |  IP: Logged
jdg
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posted 31 March 2006 03:01 PM      Profile for jdg     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Hello all,

In response to rici: I have lived in Peru on and off since 1997. I have traveled extensively through Ayacucho, Apurimac, and Cusco with indigenous folk musicians. I worked for a year with indigenous communities in Cajamarca. I have also spent considerable time in the apocalyptic though charismatic city of Lima. While I have read a good deal about Peru, my perspective on indigenous issues in Peru comes from nearly ten years of lived experience.

Demographic information for Peru is readily available online. Indigenous people in Peru make up about 45% of the total population, that is around 10 million people. Here are a few links:

http://www.indexmundi.com/peru/demographics_profile.html

http://www.columbiagazetteer.org/public/Peru.html

http://www.answers.com/topic/demographics-of-peru

http://www.gesource.ac.uk/worldguide/html/992_people.html

For you, rici, ten million people are "simply illusion?" For you, my writing about the political oblivion in which these ten million people live is failing "to remove the blindfold?"

You write: "The appeal to romantic indigenism [sic] is very emotional and all that, but has no correspondence with reality."

What reality are you talking about? Do you not believe the statistics? 45% of the total population, some ten million people?

Where in Peru are you living? Certainly not in the Andes, and if so, your blindfold must be made of the softest material for you do not even know that you wear it.

You do not realize that your comments, just as the words of Vargas Llosa, illustrate my point to a sad degree: in your world, there is no room for indigenous people: they are, for you, "romantic" relics of the past, not living beings. This, sir, is an example of one of two things: extreme ignorance or racism, pure and simple.

-John Gibler


From: San Francisco | Registered: Mar 2006  |  IP: Logged
rici
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posted 31 March 2006 07:59 PM      Profile for rici     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Originally posted by jdg:
You write: "The appeal to romantic indigenism [sic] is very emotional and all that, but has no correspondence with reality."

What reality are you talking about? Do you not believe the statistics? 45% of the total population, some ten million people?

Where in Peru are you living? Certainly not in the Andes, and if so, your blindfold must be made of the softest material for you do not even know that you wear it.


Do I believe the statistics? Well, yes and no. Should I trust the Columbia Gazeteer's US-hegemonistic definition of "indigenous"? And how can you take them seriously when they say that 45% of the population is indigenous, 45% is mestizo, 15% is European descended as well as other "small numbers". That adds up to 105% not counting the small numbers.

In any event, I don't see that this has any relationship to the actual social cleavage in Peru. The reality is that you have a large number of peruvians who identify themselves as cholos, or provincianos, or as members of their region (ayacuchanos, say), while practically no-one says that they are indio or indígena. (In the selva, of course, there is quite a different phenomenon, as I mentioned above I think.) And then you have the "European-descended inhabitants" who generally describe themselves (and are described) as criollo, which is another word for mestizo, really. I'd guess that the criollo/cholo cleavage is probably more like 15/80 than ?/45.

That's the statistical side of it, but really, as you say, if you wander around Ayacucho, you don't need statistics to see what's going on. One of the things you don't see are artificial barriers between mestizos and "pure" indians, whatever that might mean.

What you do see is a distinct cleavage between rich and poor, where most of the rich live in Lima. Poor people are also mostly "more indigenous"; that is, the poverty is based in racism, to say the least, and it is largely structural. But the racial component of the ruling class has been shifting, in part because each successive ruling elite has brought its own nouveau riche with it.

It's notorious that Peru lacks any sort of indigenous political movement, which makes it quite different from Ecuador or Bolivia, although the demographic statistics are similar. (Depending on whose view of the demographics you take, of course.) There are a lot of theories about why that is, and whether it is a good thing or not; my view is that it would not be useful to create a non-existent mestizo/indigena cleavage which would only serve to pit poor against poor. (Humala, who is mestizo I guess, is certainly not guilty of that; nor was Fujimori who as I pointed out before successfully presented himself as "a peruvian like you").

So it is certainly possible that peruvians -- that is, the great majority of peruvians, not necessarily including the criollo ruling class -- seek to build a plurietnic society, one which values its history and its cultures, but which also values Peru as a (possibly mythic) construct, on the condition that they be a full part of that Peru.

By the time the Spaniards arrived, the Andes were largely dominated by the Quechua, and more specifically by the Inca empire, which was a extense, diverse, sophisticated commercial empire with a highly-developed technology and a lot of specialization. (In fact, it was not that different from the social organization of the Spanish invaders; at least, both sides in that conflict managed to understand each other). The Quechua were terraformers; they built roads, carved mountains into cities, applied science to food production. They built on a long history of increasingly sophisticated, increasingly diverse Andean societies. The Inca empire was also authoritarian and somewhat brutal; as I said, not that different from the Spaniards.

Many people say that Peru is "seeking the next Inca". Alejandro Toledo, despite his clearly indigenous origins and appearance, turned out to be just another neoliberal economist (not really a surprise, that).

Another way of looking at the history is that Peru, like Canada but perhaps less explicitly, offered indigenous peruvians "citizenship" in return for "indigenicity". That's certainly a plausible reading even of Mariátegui, for example. Unfortunately, and as always, the deal was a trick; the ruling classes never had any intention of actually extending full benefits. But the offer, in some sense, was accepted anyway; hence, the fact that peruvians are more likely to define themselves as peruvian than indigenous; hence, the (completely legitimate) demand that Peru be a nation of all peruvians, that the terms of the deal be respected. (Again, Toledo turns out to be a predictable disappointment; he is much more interested in joining the ruling class than altering the matrix of society.)

The centrality of land as a theme has been clear since before Mariátegui; even González Prada recognized it. Mariátegui was much clearer in giving centrality to the question of land. Land reform was a constant theme of Peruvian political debate through the decades that followed, without anyone actually doing anything about it.

All of this changed in 1968 when Juan Velasco seized power, apparently with the approval of the majority of the population, and proceded to rapidly implement a comprehensive, if inadequately planned, program of land reform which certainly destroyed the latifundia, along with the recognition of quechua as an official language, educational reform including education in quechua, etc. In some sense, this could be said to be an attempt to make good on the citizenship-for-indigenicity deal, although of course it fell quite a long way short of actually creating a society free of oppression.

So much commotion, so many incomplete projects, so much outside interference. It's hard to look at Peruvian history without weeping in frustration.

So, let me be clear. I reject the assertion that I see indigenous people as "romantic relics of the past". That is a past which never existed. When I describe the evocation by euroamericans of the mythical past "romantic", I'm trying to be polite, relatively speaking. It is the other side of the "citizenship-for-indigenicity" deal, the side that is saying, no, you must stay indigenous. Both are incorrect. You can be both a citizen and indigenous.

We are all formed by our experiences. My biases come from years of living and working in the Northwest Territories, particularly the time I spent in the Science Institute of the NWT promoting indigenous science, during which time I became disgusted with the euroamerican attitude that indigenous people could only be valued to the extent that they remained indigenous. The idea that an indigenous scientist could contribute to "modern" (i.e. european) science from the framework of her cultural understanding of science was simply repugnant. (I deliberately use the word science and not knowledge, as I did then.) You can be both scientific/technological and indigenous (the inuit and the quechua were and are).

It is quite possible that I over-reacted because of that bias, but I'm sticking with what I said.

I just realized that I have gotten through this whole post without snarking at Mario Vargas Llosa. Vargas is certainly a great writer, but as a political thinker he leaves a lot to be desired. For what its worth, you can find his some of his thinking on the subect in his critique of Jose Maria Arguedas, La Utopia Arcaica. Frankly, I think you'd be better off reading more sensible commentaries by other authors, and sticking to Vargas' novels. I'm just about to head off to watch the film version of La Fiesta del Chivo, which I have to admit is a good book.

On the subject of invisibility, there is an interesting commentary by Wilfredo Ardito Vega in La Insignia. He tells the story of giving a talk at a university on the subject of racism while a friend passed through the crowd asking them to sign a petition against racism. From the podium, he says, he noted his friend repeatedly passing in front of a young person in the room without ever asking him to sign the petition, although the young man was obviously a probable victim of racism. Why? Because, he reveals, it was the guard. "His uniform makes him invisible," said one attendant afterwards.

Indeed so. Most guards are cholos, as are most domestic workers, most waiters, etc. And they cease to be fully human because they are a part of the furnishings. That is a form of racism, certainly, but the guard would have been ignored regardless of his ethnic features.

Finally, returning to the election. I think there is little doubt that much of Humala's support comes from people who feel they have been ignored by Peruvian governments (and they are correct in thinking that). They are the same people who voted for Alberto Fujimori (twice). They are the same people who voted for Alejandro Toledo. Peruvians like you. I wish them the best of luck. I really do.


From: Lima, Perú | Registered: Jun 2002  |  IP: Logged
a lonely worker
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posted 02 April 2006 01:42 PM      Profile for a lonely worker     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Although this article is rife with the usual "these people are scary anti-americans" bias it is worth a read as its one of the few article I found on the upcoming elections:

Former coup leader vows to free Peru from US 'exploitation'

In all of this it's interesting to note that when parties take on issues like "free" trade and the corporations the people respond overwhelmingly in favour. Hopefully someone here will realise this as well.

Still waiting for our Canadian Chavez ...

Hasta la victoria siempre!


From: Anywhere that annoys neo-lib tools | Registered: Jul 2005  |  IP: Logged
Hawkins
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posted 02 April 2006 03:54 PM      Profile for Hawkins     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
A 'Chavez' isn't something you wait for, its something you make.

My question is - is this 'left-wing' push more populism politics, with figure heads for movements and ideas? Or is it neo-socialism spreading on the ground (as well as through some elites), where the ideas are more important than the person leading them (I am not saying charisma and personal appeal has nothing to do with spreading ideas, just how much and is it a 'good' amount)?

And I am honestly asking this question - not trying to undermine the social programs that Chavez's government has implemented. But there is a part of me that always wants to question the overt authority/importance/'locus of ideas' embodied into a single person. In a place like Canada where we have supposed 'democracy', I don't really see a figure such as Chavez as the way to achieve social change. People need to be engaged in their own politics coupled with the need to dismantle structures of corporate/elite powers - this is where I see the focus of Canadian politics, but also in Latin American democracies. Canada is in a better position in someways because there is not decades (centries) of fear and inaccessability built into the realm of politics, but also our institutions have historical legetimacy in a way that many Lat. American countries do not (consenting legitimacy), which might make radical change more difficult.

But populist leaders co-opting desire for radical change, and diverting people's interest into an 'institutionalised revolution' I think is a legitimate fear (and shown in a few cases to be historically accurate).


From: Burlington Ont | Registered: Nov 2002  |  IP: Logged
jeff house
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posted 02 April 2006 04:27 PM      Profile for jeff house     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
But there is a part of me that always wants to question the overt authority/importance/'locus of ideas' embodied into a single person.

I think that is an important reflex. During my lifetime, I have seen revolutionary movements decapitated because the all-knowing leader was either captured (Abizmael Guzman) or committed some infraction which undermined the whole movement (Marcial in El Salvador, Daniel Ortega to a lesser extent in Nicaragua).

The earlier Sandinismo, in which a National Directorate shared leadership and thus prevented anyone from becoming caudillo, had much to be said for it.

Having a single wise leader is inherently undemocratic, because it privileges his or her thinking over that of others. If you are lucky, your wise leader leads in the right direction. But if you are not so lucky, you become powerless to oppose his errors.


From: toronto | Registered: May 2001  |  IP: Logged
a lonely worker
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posted 03 April 2006 01:48 AM      Profile for a lonely worker     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Hawkins:

quote:
My question is - is this 'left-wing' push more populism politics, with figure heads for movements and ideas? Or is it neo-socialism spreading on the ground (as well as through some elites), where the ideas are more important than the person leading them (I am not saying charisma and personal appeal has nothing to do with spreading ideas, just how much and is it a 'good' amount)?

Good questions. I think the answer requires movement from both sides. In Saskatchewan the farmers formed Pools, workers joined unions and communities started co-ops and credit unions. At the same time the CCF began to take flight.

The Parliamentary system is designed around one individual having excessive power through the PMO which is why a strong leader of a strong party is also required. Many of these gains would have been lost and we would have never seen medicare if not for the strong leadership of Tommy Douglas. To give an example. The other Canadian example I can give is the quiet revolution led to Rene Levesque.

Jeff I agree that a council idea is infinitely more democratic and revolutionary. This was applied to the co-ops and other institutions. A major shift would have to occur in our political structure to see this through. Unfortunately the only way in our current system is through a strong leader winning an election. So that's why we still need someone like a Chavez, Douglas or Levesque to be the figurehead for a fundamental shift in our political culture.

As for the non-political option. I am always amazed that worker's pension funds are the single largest owners of capital in our country. Yet the workers never exercise any control over these funds. If these funds were harnessed to provide for an alternative economy (say renewable energy generation) in a co-operative manner, the political question would be much easier to resolve with proof on the ground of a better way.

My question is why hasn't anyone looked at putting this into practise instead of simply being the paymasters for the CCCE? Everytime I raise this amongst my fellow sisters and brothers in the union movement, I always get blank stares.


From: Anywhere that annoys neo-lib tools | Registered: Jul 2005  |  IP: Logged
M. Spector
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posted 03 April 2006 02:07 AM      Profile for M. Spector   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Originally posted by a lonely worker:
I am always amazed that worker's pension funds are the single largest owners of capital in our country. Yet the workers never exercise any control over these funds. If these funds were harnessed to provide for an alternative economy (say renewable energy generation) in a co-operative manner, the political question would be much easier to resolve with proof on the ground of a better way.
I think the answer is that investment in things like alternative energy sources is riskier than investing in things like oil companies and banks, which are virtually guaranteed to make money.

The people hired to manage the pension funds are usually supposed to ensure than the funds will be secure and will grow over time, so their orientation is toward safe, blue chip investments. In fact, they leave themselves open to personal liability if they take big risks with the money.

I wouldn't want to be in the shoes of the pension committee guy who has to explain to the retired and retiring workers that their pension is all gone because that new green technology they invested in went bankrupt.


From: One millihelen: The amount of beauty required to launch one ship. | Registered: Feb 2005  |  IP: Logged
a lonely worker
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posted 03 April 2006 02:28 AM      Profile for a lonely worker     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Thanks for the answer MS. I still strongly disagree with the premise that things like alternative energy are problems. Wind generators traditionally do very well (to give one example).

In Canada, I think the larger problems is the startup costs are huge and the only one's with these funds are the energy companies who are fleecing us blind.

The other problems is every worker knows how poor the quality of management is in this country, yet we bow to their "wisdom" with our retirement. Our pension only gained 3% last year and that was a good year. Trusting your CEO to manage your funds frightens me a lot more than trusting yourself and yopur co-workers who have a hell of a lot more to lose than the CEO.

The farmers in the 30's over came these fears and the Pool did very well. There's a lot more corporate failures than there have been co-operatives. Its simply a better system without the middlemen making all the cash.


From: Anywhere that annoys neo-lib tools | Registered: Jul 2005  |  IP: Logged
rici
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posted 03 April 2006 05:12 PM      Profile for rici     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Back to the actual topic of the peruvian elections, which will be this Sunday.

What has not emerged from this campaign is any clarity about the political agenda of the leading candidates. Although there are certainly differences in the way the ideas are expressed, all three leading candidates are essentially promoting the same message: more for the poor. But in the background, all three candidates are also trying to reassure the business community that things will be OK.

Lourdes Flores has tried hard to deny her obvious connection with the economic elite (a task made next to impossible by her choice of vice-presidential candidate), even going to far as to repeatedly criticize the neoliberal "trickle-down" theory. Ollanta Humala talks of "nationalization" but not "statelization"; that is, he wants key industries to be in the hands of Peruvians, but not necessarily the state. And Alan García is presenting himself as the safe middle ground; social democrat, fiscally conservative, democratic. ("ni chicha ni limonada", as they say: neither one or the other.)

In all the rhetoric about authoritarianism versus democracy, urban versus rural, criollo versus indigenous/mestizo/whatever, one aspect of the election, obvious on the face of it, has been almost completely absent from public debate: the massive gender gap, and the rapidly growing power of the female vote.

The gender gap has been clear for some time; it is evident in all of the polls which report by gender (not all do, since some of them use a simulated ballot which preserves the anonymity of the individual being polled). For example, one of the latest (reputable) polls shows the following:

Male voters: Ollanta Humala 37.5%, Alan García 25.0%, Lourdes Flores 19.5%

Female voters: Lourdes Flores 33.0%, Ollanta Humala 27.5%, Alan García 20.4%

Another indication is the predicted composition of the Congress, although polling cannot be considered more than an approximation. Nonetheless, the above-referenced poll (carried out by the Public Opinion Group of the University of Lima) attempted a prediction, which showed 33 of the 120 seats going to women, or 27.5%. In Lima (which has 35 of the 120 congressional seats) the three most popular congressional candidates are women, and probably about 15 women will be elected.

It seems apparent that Ollanta Humala will come first in the presidential elections, but will not win the absolute majority necessary to avoid a second round. It is certainly not a given that he will face Lourdes Flores in the second round; APRA has always done better than polling indicates.

It's likely that many anti-Humala voters will vote strategically in the presidential elections, opting for the candidate they think most likely to win in a two-way contest. It's not clear who that might be. Ironically, the candidate which polls show to have the highest support in a two-way contest is Valentín Paniagua, who was president in the transitional government (Oct. 2000-July 2001) which followed the collapse of government of Fujimori. Paniagua maintained an approval level of around 80% during the nine months of his presidency; however, he is currently a distant fifth in presidential polling. (My guess is that he is everyone's second choice.)


From: Lima, Perú | Registered: Jun 2002  |  IP: Logged
rici
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posted 06 April 2006 11:32 AM      Profile for rici     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Peruvian election campaigns traditionally end with mass meetings in the centre of Lima. Ollanta Humala held his last night; Alan García and Lourdes Flores will hold theirs tonight. Simultaneous meetings have been discouraged by the municipal government, due to the history of violent interchanges; however, this year they are allowing it; it will be an interesting test of the claim of both García and Flores that they represent "democracy". (There will actually be three rallies tonight, since Valentín Paniagua is also closing his campaign; also, apparently, there will be a "none of the above" rally closer to where I live. I might go to that instead of fighting public transit again to get in and out of the centre of Lima.)

In the days before polls, peruvian newspapers used to use what they called a "people-meter": photographers would climb to the top of the tallest nearby building and take aerial pictures of the crowd, and then an attempt would be made to estimate the size based on the density at different places. This mostly measured the campaign's organizational ability (at best). The people-meter is no longer around, but campaigns still put their energy and resources into promoting attendance.

I'd hate to venture a guess at what the attendance was last night. Media estimates range from 10,000 to 25,000; I'd put it at the high end of those estimates. There were a lot of reservistas, although they were keeping a slightly low profile. There is a report in English on the UBC Peru election weblog, with some good pictures, and a sampling of reports from the written press in Spanish.


From: Lima, Perú | Registered: Jun 2002  |  IP: Logged
jdg
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posted 06 April 2006 07:00 PM      Profile for jdg     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
rici:

Thanks for your response. I apologize for being slow to respond. I have only intermittent internet access. I also ask forgiveness in advance for my clipped writing style here, unfortunately I do not have the time I would like to dedicate to this response, but value the dialogue and would rather not respond with further silence.

You wrote:

The reality is that you have a large number of peruvians who identify themselves as cholos, or provincianos, or as members of their region (ayacuchanos, say), while practically no-one says that they are indio or indígena.

This seems like semantics to me. Cholo means indio. Not only that, but is used among whites and mestizos as a racially derogatory term. My experience of this comes from living for years with Ayacuchanos and asking tons of questions.

Moreover, self-identification in Spanish is mostly beside the point when discussing mono-lingual, illiterate Quechua and Aymara speakers. I do not think that identity surveys using Spanish terms capture the social fabric of Peru.

You wrote:
That's the statistical side of it, but really, as you say, if you wander around Ayacucho, you don't need statistics to see what's going on. One of the things you don't see are artificial barriers between mestizos and "pure" indians, whatever that might mean.
Language is a very real barrier. Peru is not a bi-lingual society and mono-lingual Quechua and Aymara speakers stand at a very significant economic and political disadvantage to Spanish speakers.

Back to personal experience, things I have witnessed time and again. In Ayacucho, white land owners taking the bus from Lima who scream and fight when indigenous people get on to stand in the aisle and ride from one village to the next, e.g., from Puqio to Cora Cora, shouting: do not let those pigs on, they smell. In Ayacucho, white land owners who do not let their kids play with Indian kids. Some do not let Indians enter their homes.

You wrote:
What you do see is a distinct cleavage between rich and poor, where most of the rich live in Lima. Poor people are also mostly "more indigenous"; that is, the poverty is based in racism, to say the least, and it is largely structural. But the racial component of the ruling class has been shifting, in part because each successive ruling elite has brought its own nouveau riche with it.
I agree fully.

You wrote:

It's notorious that Peru lacks any sort of indigenous political movement

I, sadly, agree. Sendero has had much to do with this I think.

There is much of interest to me in your response, but unfortunately I must stop here for now.


From: San Francisco | Registered: Mar 2006  |  IP: Logged
rici
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posted 07 April 2006 02:57 PM      Profile for rici     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Peruvian election law requires that all publicity stop two days before the election, so we're theoretically now in the quiet period. Sales of alcohol stopped last night at midnight. Public meetings are forbidden. On Sunday during the elections, not even the churches are allowed to hold mass; they have to do that before 8 a.m. or after 4 p.m. Concerts, movies, and any sort of meeting are forbidden for the whole of Sunday. Police are not allowed to make arrests except when the criminals are caught in the act. All of this reflects Peru's history with elections.

However, as far as I can see, there was no public disturbance at all last night, despite the fact that 50,000 or more people attended three different campaign rallies all relatively near to each other. The main problem was traffic; it was just impossible to get around in the city yesterday.

García's rally was in exactly the same place as Humala's; El Comercio published aerial pictures of both of them, and they look pretty similar. I'd guess that there were a few more people at García's rally, because the crowd appears to be slightly denser, but it's hard to say for sure. The rallies for Lourdes Flores and Valentín Paniagua were held in smaller places, which were definitely full, but probably were not as large. I don't put a lot of emphasis in this, though -- as I said before, it is a better reflection of party organization than popular support.

Still, it is interesting that Paniagua could attract a reasonably large crowd even though polls show that he has only five or six per cent of the vote. My guess is that many of the people at his rally will not actually vote for him, but will vote for his party in the congressional election.

All three candidates used their rallies to talk about their election platforms, which is encouraging. García and Paniagua, in particular, were very specific; Flores' oration was rather more general, in my opinion, but she did make some specific statements particularly in respect to agricultural (more money for irrigation and support for agricultural exports).

García's speech was, as was to be expected, an impressive show of oratory; he is undoubtedly the most powerful speaker in Perú. He spoke for two hours, starting with a capsule history of Perú and of his party, and then speaking at length about agriculture, education, crime prevention, and labour rights. At moments, he reminded me a lot of Tommy Douglas (although he's a lot taller) and I almost expected him to launch into a Peruvian version of Mouseland. (APRA is, historically, social-democrat, at least in theory, but it has shifted towards the centre; in the South American political spectrum it is usually described as centre-right, although it describes itself as centre-left.)

García was accompanied through his speech by a white dove, which landed on the stage enclosure shortly after he started, and perched docilely in front of García throughout, until shortly before the end of the speech when García put out his hand and the dove hopped on to it; for a few minutes, García walked around the stage with the dove on his hand, creating a great photo opportunity when he raised his hands to shout "Viva el Perú." One of APRA's symbols is a white dove.

Paniagua's speech was less emotional but also well-delivered; his rhetorical flourishes were slightly limited by the fact that he was standing on a box. (Paniagua is even shorter than Douglas was, and could well have used Douglas' line about measuring people from the neck up instead of from the neck down.) Paniagua is a profressor of constitutional law, and probably quite a good one; he spoke very articulately about reform of the state and mechanisms to eradicate corruption; he also promised to shift public resources from Lima to the interior, and signficantly increase public spending on education.

Paniagua's party, Acción Popular, is clearly centre-right, but Paniagua is on the leftish edge of the party; in practice, there is probably not much difference between Paniagua and García on economic policy, and Paniagua is somewhat more liberal on social issues (although his party is not).

García, for example, supports the death penalty, something which Paniagua obviously finds repugnant particularly as it would violate the Treaty of San José and could not be imposed without Perú withdrawing from the American Convention on Human Rights. Polls indicate that two-thirds of Peruvians favour the death penalty. Paniagua does not draw attention to the issue (unlike García), but he has clearly said that he opposes it, and is one of the few politicians in Perú to do so. (Another one is the current minister for women, Ana María Romero.) Humala is widely believed to favour the death penalty, but officially says he would submit it to a referendum; Lourdes Flores has only said that she is uncomfortable with withdrawing from the human rights convention.


From: Lima, Perú | Registered: Jun 2002  |  IP: Logged
Doug
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posted 07 April 2006 06:08 PM      Profile for Doug   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
García was accompanied through his speech by a white dove, which landed on the stage enclosure shortly after he started, and perched docilely in front of García throughout, until shortly before the end of the speech when García put out his hand and the dove hopped on to it; for a few minutes, García walked around the stage with the dove on his hand, creating a great photo opportunity when he raised his hands to shout "Viva el Perú." One of APRA's symbols is a white dove.

Wow, that's impressive. I wonder how long it took to train the dove to do that.

A bit risky, though...can you imagine how it would have looked if the bird did what birds often do, relieving itself at the wrong time?


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rici
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posted 07 April 2006 06:37 PM      Profile for rici     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Originally posted by Doug:

Wow, that's impressive. I wonder how long it took to train the dove to do that.

A bit risky, though...can you imagine how it would have looked if the bird did what birds often do, relieving itself at the wrong time?


Exactly what I was thinking at the time. I couldn't figure out if it was a tame dove or simply García's dramatical flair, but it was certainly effective. I eventually decided it must be tame. Here's the front page of the local newspaper (maybe, I don't know how long the URL will work). The headline reads "This time, I will not let you down" (literally, I will not defraud you), in reference to the disastrous outcome of his previous presidency (1985-1990).

There's a picture in El Comercio of the dove sitting on García's head (I missed that moment; it was after he'd stopped speaking), but I can't find it online. He seems to be taking it in stride, though.

[ 07 April 2006: Message edited by: rici ]

[ 07 April 2006: Message edited by: rici ]


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rici
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posted 07 April 2006 07:56 PM      Profile for rici     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Directing traffic at Peru's Electoral Crossroads -- from Embassy, a Hill Times publication -- is an interview with Lloyd Axworthy, who is head of the OAS observation team.

Lloyd's take on Canadian foreign policy:

quote:
I'm getting tired of having certain political leaders saying Canadian values are based on us going to fight somewhere. I think Canadian values are getting people the right to vote.


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rici
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posted 09 April 2006 03:02 PM      Profile for rici     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
I just got back from the polling station where my wife voted; all very peaceful. However, across town, there was a largish anti-Humala crowd waiting for him to show up to vote (in a middle-class Lima neighbourhood). Humala was also mobbed by the press, which he has been refusing to talk to since yesterday. The end result was chaos; the crowd, shouting "killer, killer" and "Lourdes for president" was confronted by a smaller group of pro-Humala supporters. Humala and his wife, Nadine Heredia, remained trapped inside the voting station for more than an hour while police tried to create order. In the middle of all of this, Lloyd Axworthy arrived (I saw this on television), visibly shaken. In the end, the police managed to form a human cordon and Humala and his wife, accompanied by Axworthy and some other officials, managed to get out.

Inside the polling station, the mass of journalists -- mostly international, from what I could see -- created their own sort of chaos, climbing on voting tables, breaking plexiglass partitions, pushing aside election officials and observers, and struggling with each other to get close enough to Humala to take a picture or yell a question. The election officials were obviously quite annoyed, with good reason I would say.

Axworthy says he will highlight the incident in his report. I imagine it will also be the image presented by the international media about the Peruvian election.

The other candidates, and the current president, voted in complete calm, as far as I can see. I haven't seen any reports of violence from outside Perú, either, although there were allegedly threats from senderistas.

Exit polls will be available at 4 p.m. Perú time (GMT-5); the first official results are expected between 8 p.m. and 9 p.m. ONPE (which is responsible for counting the vote) is apparently only planning on giving two reports tonight, rather than hourly reports as in the past. Transparencia, the civil society organization which monitors elections, will also be doing a "quick count" which might be available also between 7 and 8 p.m.


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Heavy Sharper
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posted 09 April 2006 06:30 PM      Profile for Heavy Sharper        Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Exit polls show bad news for the forces of USian imperialism:

http://today.reuters.com/investing/financeArticle.aspx?type=bondsNews&storyID=2006-04-09T210052Z_01_N09290467_RTRIDST_0_PERU-ELECTION-EXITPOLL-URGENT.XML

quote:
Humala had 29.6 percent of the vote, trailed by leftist former President Alan Garcia with 24.5 percent. Pro-business conservative Lourdes Flores was third with 24.2 percent

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rici
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posted 09 April 2006 07:33 PM      Profile for rici     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
HS: I think that url will sidescroll on browsers which have that problem.

There are a few surprises in the exit polls, but they may not bear much resemblance to reality, so we'll have to wait a bit.

The most important thing is that there is no clear indication of who will face Humala in the second round. Two of the three major exit polls show García with a slight lead; one shows Flores with a slight lead. But the differences are not statistically significant. If the actual results are as close as the exit polls, it may take a week or more for ONPE to produce reliable figures -- there will be lots of challenges.

The other interesting thing is that 20% of the population did not vote for any of the top three candidates, even though it has been clear for some time who the top three would be. So the predictions that people would vote strategically to select a second-round candidate did not materialize. In fact, two minority candidates significantly increased their vote: Valentín Paniagua (approximately 7%) and Humberto Lay (approximately 4%). Lay was hardly showing in pre-election polling; the exit polls indicate that his party is likely to cross the electoral threshold and win some congressional representation, perhaps three or four seats. (Lay is an evangelical christian but relatively liberal.)

The projection of congressional seats is roughly consistent with pre-election polling; it gives APRA (García) the largest caucus (38 out of 120), followed by UPP (Humala) with 29 and Unidad Nacional (Flores) with 24. The Fujimorista Party AF (Alliance for the Future, but "coincidentally" Fujimori's initials) is expected to win 14 seats. Under Peru's heavily presidential constitution, the Congress is not as important as it should be, but even so those results will be problematic for whoever wins. (If they hold up.)

Back in a few hours


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Heavy Sharper
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posted 09 April 2006 11:01 PM      Profile for Heavy Sharper        Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
You mean people are stupid enough to vote for Fujimoristas...

Well...I suppose if the Kuomintang can win in Taiwan, the LDP can poll second in Russia, and Bush can win the the U.S., people will vote for anything.


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Wilf Day
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posted 10 April 2006 12:03 AM      Profile for Wilf Day     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
10:45 pm (hora de Lima) Flash conteo rapido al 100% de Apoyo
Ollanta Humala: 30.2.%
Lourdes Flores: 24.3%
Alan Garcia: 23.8%
Matha Chavez: 7.6%
Valentin Paniagua: 6.0%
Humberto Lay: 4.3%

Is this as good a site as it seems to be?

And this looks interesting too?

I read that "The voter actually votes for a political party associated with a presidential candidate and a political party associated with a list of congressional candidates. In the President’s section of the ballot, the voter chooses a President by marking a party symbol that is next to a picture of the candidate. The ballot does not have the names of the presidential candidates. In the congress’ part of the ballot, the voter can choose at the most two representatives in most districts by marking a party symbol that is associated with a party list of candidates. If the voter wants to pick particular candidates from the party list, the voter must write in two boxes next to the party symbol the numbers linked to the names of the candidates in the list." Is this still the case this time?

How much ballot-splitting goes on? With the two halves of the ballot adjacent, and the party name on each half in line with the other half, obviously it's easiest to vote the same party for president and Congress, but that's also the case in New Zealand yet ticket-splitting is a huge factor. Does this account for the fourth-place and fifth-place candidates for president getting more votes than, rationally, they should?

quote:
Originally posted by rici:
Lay is an evangelical christian but relatively liberal.

From what I've read from Brazil, "evangelical" is the same word as "protestant" and the protestants are often liberal, as minority groups often are. Is Peru different? Or is Lay not only protestant but "born-again?"

[ 10 April 2006: Message edited by: Wilf Day ]


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Albireo
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posted 10 April 2006 01:06 AM      Profile for Albireo     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
With about 30% of the vote counted, they have the top 3 candidates all within 2% of each other:

Ollanta Humala tiene 27,59%, Flores Nano 26,72% y Alan García 25,70%. El Comercio (Lima)

Is it likely that Lima and some other cities would come in first, and the more remote towns and countryside later? I guess the significance of these early results depends on where they are primarily from, and who is strong there.

[ 10 April 2006: Message edited by: Albireo ]


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Albireo
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posted 10 April 2006 01:30 AM      Profile for Albireo     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Update: With 45.1% of the vote counted, it is

Ollanta Humala 27,32%
Flores Nano 26,45%
Alan García 26,95%

El Comercio.

This is extremely tight. And rather different than the exit polls. Is something being arranged to keep out Humala? Or is it just that the poorer areas are disproportionately later to report results?

[ 10 April 2006: Message edited by: Albireo ]


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Albireo
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posted 10 April 2006 01:36 AM      Profile for Albireo     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Current congressional projections:
quote:
23:00: Conteo rápido de Apoyo al 100% para el Congreso. UPP 43 escaños, Apra 35, Unidad Nacional 19, Alianza por el Futuro 15, Frente de Centro 5, Restauración Nacional 3, Otros 8.
Minuto a Minuto: Elecciones 2006

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rici
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posted 10 April 2006 01:46 AM      Profile for rici     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Heavy-Sharper: Fujimori's vote is largely the result of the fact that (some) poor Peruvians feel that, despite everything, they benefited from his government. (In fact, they probably would not say "despite everything".) Had Fujimori himself been running, sadly, the vote probably would have been higher. As it is, his absence probably benefits Ollanta Humala.

Wilf: I mostly agree with Roncagliolo, as you'll see from my previous posts. I only skimmed his commentary, though. The UBC site is a pretty good compilation, for sure.

The word "evangelical" covers a broad range -- it certainly includes born-again fundamentalism, but that's not where Humberto Lay comes from. I'd say there is a difference between "protestant" and "evangelical", but I'm not really qualified to answer.

The ballots are roughly as you describe them; the big difference is that there are three votes this year, not two. There is also a vote for representatives to the Andean Parliament (think of the EU as it was much earlier in its history, but with only five member countries).

The Apoyo "quick count" shows that a lot of vote splitting goes on, which is the norm. Humala seems to have 30% of the presidential vote but only 21% of the congressional vote, so at least a third of his supporters voted for a different party. Similarly, Lourdes Flores won 25% of the vote, but her party only won 15% of the congressional vote. APRA, which is the most established political party in Peru, seems to have the closest alignment: 25% for Alan García, 21% for APRA congressfolk.

Apoyo is now projecting that UPP will have the largest congressional block, with 43 seats, followed by APRA with 35. They are projecting only 19 for UN and 15 for AF. According to their figures, Lay's party squeaked over the 4% threshold, but the governing party (Peru Posible) did not. (Lay's vote and his party vote are almost identical, as you might expect. Perú Posible did not run a presidential candidate, and I expect that most of their voters voted for Lourdes Flores.)

Albireo: The initial sample was almost entirely urban, and is therefore considerably biased. They just announced a 45% sample, still biased, but the figures didn't change much; García and Humala both improved their vote, but the order is unaltered.

Both García and Flores expressed optimism about coming second. Flores seems to have a better chance, but the remote rural vote could swing things the other way, as García claims. We might have a better idea tomorrow, or it might take much longer (which is an odd position to be in really: we know there will be a second vote, but we don't know who will be running.)

The congressional representation reflects an imbalance which was designed to reduce the influence of Lima in national politics. Lima has 35% of the national population, but only 29% of congressional seats (35 out of 120). Most of the other districts have 3-5 seats, so Lima is the only district where minority candidates can easily be elected. Minority parties with significant rural vote are thus doubly affected. For example, Lay's vote, which is much higher outside of Lima than inside, should translate into 5 seats, but will likely only be 3 (he did quite well in at least one rural district.)

Regardless of who comes second, the second round will be really close, and it will likely be an intensively negative campaign.


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Heavy Sharper
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posted 10 April 2006 01:53 AM      Profile for Heavy Sharper        Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
I was reading a CNN article that called Toledo a leftist incumbent...

That doesn't seem consistent with what little I've been able to find on Toldeo and Peru Posible, which comes across as fairly neo-lib.

I can speak and read sone Spanish (although not as fluently as I can French and nowhere near as fluently as I can English...)...Would Spanish Wikipedia be a better source than its English counterpart? Are there even better online sources?

[ 10 April 2006: Message edited by: Heavy Sharper ]


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rici
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posted 10 April 2006 01:54 AM      Profile for rici     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Update: I just caught Transparencia's quick count, which is a carefully selected random sample including remote rural constituencies. It is not definitive, either: Ollanta Humala: 29.85%, Lourdes Flores: 24.42%, Alan Garcia: 24.27%

Albireo: it's not a plot. Remote ridings are really remote, and that's where Humala's strength lies (and, to a lesser extent, García's.) Flores' base is Lima and other urban centres, and the mechanics of the transportation system means that those are the results which arrive first.

On the subject of plots and conspiracies, it is impossible to ignore the enormous and historic anti-APRA bias in pretty well all the media. In the last two or three days of the campaign, UN (and other right-wing groups) ran a truly ugly anti-APRA smear campaign, in a desperate attempt to retain second place despite Flores' slide over the last week or two. It might have worked.


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Wilf Day
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posted 10 April 2006 01:56 AM      Profile for Wilf Day     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Originally posted by rici:
an odd position to be in really: we know there will be a second vote, but we don't know who will be running.

No kidding.

11:25 pm: Transparencia Conteo Rapido
Ollanta Humala: 29.85%
Lourdes Flores: 24.42%
Alan Garcia: 24.27%

0.15% margin.

Do you have a prediction as to what proportion of Garcia's voters would favour Humala?

quote:
Originally posted by rici:
I'd say there is a difference between "protestant" and "evangelical", but I'm not really qualified to answer.

A minor point, but one which has puzzled me. Is there a Spanish word for Protestant? In Brazil it seems there is no Portuguese word for protestant, the only term being evangelical.

[ 10 April 2006: Message edited by: Wilf Day ]


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rici
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posted 10 April 2006 02:08 AM      Profile for rici     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Originally posted by Heavy Sharper:
I was reading a CNN article that called Toledo a leftist incumbent...

That doesn't seem consistent with what little I've been able to find on Toldeo and Peru Posible, which comes across as fairly neo-lib.


I guess he's leftist compared with mainstream US politics. He is clearly neoliberal. Roughly speaking, you could align politicians with Canadian politics: Flores would be a Red Tory; Toledo a Liberal; García would have no trouble fitting into the NDP.

The difference is that Perú has always had a significant "none-of-the-above" vote (Roncagliolo's interview which Wilf posted is reasonably accurate.) In 1985, that vote went to an uneasy leftwing coalition called the Izquierda Unida (it turned out not to be unida, which was pretty obvious at the time, too). In 1990, it went to Fujimori. In 2001, it went to Toledo. It amounts to about 20% of the vote. Another 20% of the vote is right-wing, and the rest is mostly APRA, with some support for Acción Popular (another roughly Liberal party).

That's a bit of an over-simplification, but the point is that there are a lot of people who (correctly) feel that they are simply not part of the political system and vote for whoever they think is also not part of the political system and might be inclined to do something for them. Had APRA not had such a disastrous government in 1985-90, things might be different; in many ways, APRA is the natural governing party of Perú, although it was violently suppressed throughout most of its history. García is on the right of APRA, and if he does not manage to win this election, there is some hope that APRA's left-wing will regain the party.


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rici
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posted 10 April 2006 02:13 AM      Profile for rici     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Originally posted by Wilf Day:

A minor point, but one which has puzzled me. Is there a Spanish word for Protestant? In Brazil it seems there is no Portuguese word for protestant, the only term being evangelical.

protestante. According to Manuel Seco (the best dictionary), protestante is a Christian who does not accept the authority of the Pope of Rome, while an evangelico is a protestant sect which puts particular emphasis on personal conversion and salvation through Christ.


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rici
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posted 10 April 2006 02:16 AM      Profile for rici     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Originally posted by Wilf Day:

Do you have a prediction as to what proportion of Garcia's voters would favour Humala?

More than half, I would guess. Also, there will be quite a few who will vote in blank.

But remember that 20% of the vote was not for any of the top three candidates. Of those, I would expect the majority would vote for whichever candidate is not Ollanta Humala, with a preference for Flores.

If García squeaks into second place, then I'd expect that more than half of Flores' vote would go to García but quite a few would vote in blank.

[ 10 April 2006: Message edited by: rici ]


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Heavy Sharper
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posted 10 April 2006 02:19 AM      Profile for Heavy Sharper        Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Liberal, Red Tory, and more moderate New Democrat...Not much of an ideological gap...
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rici
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posted 10 April 2006 02:31 AM      Profile for rici     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Originally posted by Heavy Sharper:
Liberal, Red Tory, and more moderate New Democrat...Not much of an ideological gap...

Yep. Peruvian governments are more about who your friends are than what your politics is. Lourdes is on the left of her party, I would say, and García on the right of his, so the tendency is towards the centre. No-one really knows what Humala's politics might look like in practice; the people who have been clustering around him are a segment of the left, and the segment of the business class which formerly clustered around Toledo and before that around Fujimori. (In fact, a segment of the left also clustered around Fujimori and Toledo, in the beginning.)

Whatever else you say about Toledo, whose presidency was even more disappointing than I thought it would be, he at least did not become an authoritarian, as Fujimori did. He did not do anything significant towards reducing institutional corruption, but he was certainly not a sociopathic thief. Lots of nepotism and under-the-table deals with business leaders, though.

García's 1985 government was also flawed by low-level corruption, and by systematic violation of human rights in the fight against Sendero (as was the Belaunde government before him, and Fujimori afterwards). Toledo didn't really have to deal with Sendero (only a few remnants are still in the wild). His treatment of coca-leaf growers was overly harsh, but there were no extrajudicial killings that I know of.

On the whole, Peruvians have not been well served by government, so it's no surprise that there is such a high level of rejection.


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rici
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posted 10 April 2006 03:15 AM      Profile for rici     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Official ONPE site

It's mostly working now, but there are still a few bugs in the system. Good luck.

Seems that the turnout (based mostly on urban polls, I think) is just under 90%. You have to pay a fine if you don't vote. Of the votes casts, about 11.2% are blank or spoiled (mostly deliberately, if history is anything to go on). That's relatively low, if I recall correctly.


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Albireo
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posted 10 April 2006 12:42 PM      Profile for Albireo     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Having a hard time bringing up that official site -- it keeps timing out. It must be overloaded and/or having problems.

The latest I see at El Comercio has 67.3% of the vote counted, Humala's lead widening slightly, and Flores edging out Garcia for the other spot in the run-off.

28.70% Ollanta Humala (UPP) (of valid votes)
25.78% Lourdes Flores (UN)
25.07% Alan García (APRA)


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Heavy Sharper
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posted 10 April 2006 12:54 PM      Profile for Heavy Sharper        Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Humala's victory is a given, but it's still too close to call between Garcia and Nano
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Albireo
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posted 10 April 2006 12:58 PM      Profile for Albireo     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
A Peruvian ex-pat I know thinks that Garcia has strong support in Arequipa and Trujillo, less support in Lima, and that he should do better than Flores (but worse than Humala) among poorer voters in shantytowns and remote rural areas. If that is the case, and if the latter-mentioned areas are counted later, does it not then look like Garcia could catch up? And yet I hear much talk in the media as if Flores had second almost wrapped up. What gives?

[ 10 April 2006: Message edited by: Albireo ]


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rici
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posted 10 April 2006 01:01 PM      Profile for rici     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Originally posted by Heavy Sharper:
Humala's victory is a given, but it's still too close to call between Garcia and Nano

Flores is her surname. Nano is the matronym.

Full names:

Ollanta Humala Tasso
Alan García Pérez
Lourdes Flores Nano

Actually, those are not quite complete; there are middle names, too. García is actually Alan Gabriel Ludwig García Pérez and Flores is Lourdes Celmira Rosario Flores Nano. But the point is, the matronym (that is, the mother's surname) always follows the surname.


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rici
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posted 10 April 2006 01:10 PM      Profile for rici     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Originally posted by Albireo:
A Peruvian ex-pat I know thinks that Garcia has strong support in Arequipa and Trujillo, less support in Lima, and that he should do better than Flores (but worse than Humala) among poorer voters in shantytowns and remote rural areas. If that is the case, and if the latter-mentioned areas are counted later, does it not then look like Garcia could catch up? And yet I hear much talk in the media as if Flores had second almost wrapped up. What gives?

García has strong support in Trujillo, and in general in the North. Arequipa and Cusco are Humala's strongholds. Both García and Humala are doing better in rural areas, which are the last to be counted (by ONPE). On the other hand, Flores has a huge advantage in the international vote, which might be enough to keep her in second place.

But García could catch up; we won't know for a while.

By the way, the 2001 results were surprisingly similar:

Toledo 36.5%; García 25.8%; Flores 24.3%. It took a month and a half, as I recall, to get the official results, but they didn't differ much from ONPE's quick count final figures.

Toledo went on to beat García by a fairly narrow 53/47 or so.


From: Lima, Perú | Registered: Jun 2002  |  IP: Logged
M. Spector
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posted 10 April 2006 07:27 PM      Profile for M. Spector   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Granma interviews Humala:
quote:
Ollanta rejects labels: “I am a nationalist because I support my nation and my people. I am not a leftist or a rightist: I am one of those from below and I propose to govern with them – and with everyone.”
....
“I come from a family of bankrupted farmers who had to leave the country for the city in a desperate search for survival,” he affirms. “Agriculture, Peru’s principal economic and social base, has been remorselessly attacked. In many cases the huge latifundia conceded on false premises include entire villages of native peoples who have been inhumanly enslaved.”

A nationalist government will reactivate agriculture, will give value to the land, protect its cultivators, offer them financial credits, promote their cultural, scientific and technical development, create a sound agrarian sector, care for and develop sources of water and conditions so that rural people do not have to emigrate and live in slum conditions in the cities or cross the border in search of sustenance in other lands. Agriculture is the pillar of the country’s development,” he affirms, adding: “We shall begin by respecting the rights of the poorest.”

The nationalist candidate emphasizes the protection of the environment and adds: “We support the Kyoto Protocol and will give special attention to the precarious situation of the environment in line with the agreements and efforts of the United Nations.

“Education is another sector that demands particular attention from a nationalist government. The situation of 20,000 schools in the Altiplano region is tragic. We shall make an effort to give education to everyone, to eliminate illiteracy and guarantee the country’s present and future.

“I am going to construct the dignity of the people and their pride at being the owners of their country. The Peruvian people are the owners of their homeland: workers have the right to receive a decent wage that will allow them to maintain their families and with respect for the 8-hour working day, which has been criminally abolished,” he states.

Ollanta Humala advises that, through the country’s legal mechanisms, a nationalist government will carefully review all the concessions granted to national and foreign investors, will take action against corruption and oblige those who have been evading the payment of taxes to cover them.

“We will respect foreign investment although it must meet certain requisites: the generation of employment – direct or indirect – the transfer of technology to the country, respect for its fiscal obligations and protection of the environment. Those that meet these requisites are not going to have any problems,” stated the Peruvian nationalist candidate, adding: “We are going to consolidate democracy, affirm the institutions and reaffirm the concept of citizenship.

“I am against the neoliberal economic model. We want an economy at the service of the people and have a sense of solidarity with other Latin American countries that are trying to build a regional economic, social, energetic agenda and one that protects the environment, all in function of the well being of our peoples, without exception.”

In this context, Ollanta Humala notes: “I am not going to accept pressure from any country to discriminate against another country. We are not anti: we are pro, and we want good relations with all nations, including Chile and Ecuador, our neighbors, based on respect for our rights and theirs. We will have a politics of agreement and dialogue.

“The Peruvian people are sick of corruption, of seeing how the law is selectively applied, in favor of those who already have everything. Moreover,” he emphasizes, “there is currently a discrimination based on language. Many indigenous people do not speak Spanish and can see how their rights are being violated without even having the possibility of defending themselves, because their culture belongs to another of the seven languages spoken in the country.”

And, in conclusion, Ollanta Humala leafs through a copy of Granma International. “Sometimes,” he confides with a smile, “I like to savor a Havana cigar. Via this publication, I would like to send a very fraternal greeting to the Cuban people.”



From: One millihelen: The amount of beauty required to launch one ship. | Registered: Feb 2005  |  IP: Logged
Heavy Sharper
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posted 10 April 2006 08:22 PM      Profile for Heavy Sharper        Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
It's funny how somebody who claims to reject conventional ideology is doing a much better job at resisting the neo-liberal cabal than left-liberals, social democrats, or even Eurocommunists.
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M. Spector
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posted 10 April 2006 08:28 PM      Profile for M. Spector   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
He doesn't actually have the job yet. If he gets it, we'll see how well he does.
From: One millihelen: The amount of beauty required to launch one ship. | Registered: Feb 2005  |  IP: Logged
Heavy Sharper
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posted 10 April 2006 11:14 PM      Profile for Heavy Sharper        Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Point well-taken...

At any rate, Flores is looking less and less likely succeed in her attempts at doing to Peru what the fascist management is doing to Babble.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peruvian_national_election,_2006


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M. Spector
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posted 18 April 2006 06:33 PM      Profile for M. Spector   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Peru election runoff spot down to the wire
quote:
Social democrat Alan Garcia on Monday led rightist Lourdes Flores by 0.79 percent of votes cast for the right to meet Ollanta Humala in a run-off for Peru's presidency, officials said.

Former president Garcia led with a razor-thin 89,969 votes, with 90.94 percent of votes cast a week ago for the presidency, according to election officials.

Humala, a firebrand populist, remained out in front with 30.9 percent, still well below 50 percent of the vote in April 9 voting, meaning he will face the second vote-getter in a runoff.


[Edited to apply Canadian number-style conventions.]

[ 18 April 2006: Message edited by: M. Spector ]


From: One millihelen: The amount of beauty required to launch one ship. | Registered: Feb 2005  |  IP: Logged
Left Turn
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posted 18 April 2006 07:54 PM      Profile for Left Turn     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
A runoff between Humala and Flores might be preferrable to one between Humala and Garcia.

If Humala and Garcia are in a runoff, those who voted for Flores will have to shift their votes, and these votes will probably go to centrist Garcia rather than leftist Humala. Thus a likely Garcia win.

If Humala and Flores are in a runoff, it would be those who voted for Garcia shifting their votes. Some of these would go to Humala (voters who will never vote for the right wing) and some will go to Flores (those who will never vote for someone as left as Humala). Not a guaranteed victory for Humala by any stretch of the imagination, but a darned sight better chance than with a Humala/ Garcia runoff.

[Edited to Add] Heavy Sharper, please fix the sidescroll problem in one of your above posts (the one that begins with "Bad news for the forces of US Imperialism:")

[ 18 April 2006: Message edited by: Left Turn ]


From: Burnaby, BC | Registered: Mar 2005  |  IP: Logged
Stockholm
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posted 18 April 2006 08:16 PM      Profile for Stockholm     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
I think Garcia is the best of the three. Flores is too rightwing and Humala seems to have a little too little commitment to things like democracy and feedom of the p[ress and professes to admire a tyrnnical military dictator whop ruled Peru in the early 70s.

I reject military dictatorship and suppression of democracy regardless of whether it is by governments with rightwing or leftwing economic policies.

Garcia is from a party APRA that has a very longt tradition of being a DEMOCRATIC socialist party along the lines of the NDP in Canada.

Surley there is no other option for people who believe in social justice within a democracic system of government.


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Left Turn
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posted 18 April 2006 08:54 PM      Profile for Left Turn     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Stockholm wrote:
quote:
Humala seems to have a little too little commitment to things like democracy and feedom of the p[ress and professes to admire a tyrnnical military dictator whop ruled Peru in the early 70s.

Sources?


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Stockholm
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posted 18 April 2006 10:37 PM      Profile for Stockholm     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
This is what the Guardian says about Humala - makes it look like if he wins the lection it could be the last election Peru ever has again. Humala is also suspected of having committed atrocities as a military commander fighting the Shining Path guerillas.

I generally think that military people (along with evangelical Christians) shoudl stay out of politics.

quote:
Peru's middle classes and business elite have expressed alarm at Mr Humala's admiration for Mr Chavez and his pledge to rewrite the constitution to strip power from what he last week described as "a fascist dictatorship of the economically powerful".

He has also pledged to industrialise Peru's production of coca, the basis for cocaine.

However, in an interview with the Venezuelan-based television station Telesur on Monday, he accused his opponents of distorting his message and insisted he had not ruled out a free trade agreement with the US.

The media had talked of "nationalisations, expropriations and freedom of the press being compromised, but I've never said these things", he said.

"Instead, I reiterate that we have a complete respect from freedom of expression ... and we reject any attempts to expropriate private property."

Some opponents claimed Mr Humala could return Peru to autocratic rule, saying he led a failed coup against then-president Alberto Fujimori in 2000.

He has also expressed admiration for the 1968-1975 leftwing dictatorship of General Juan Velasco, who took over Peru's media and seized land from wealthy Peruvians for agrarian reform.



From: Toronto | Registered: Sep 2002  |  IP: Logged
rici
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posted 19 April 2006 12:07 AM      Profile for rici     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Originally posted by Stockholm:
I think Garcia is the best of the three. Flores is too rightwing and Humala seems to have a little too little commitment to things like democracy and feedom of the p[ress and professes to admire a tyrnnical military dictator whop ruled Peru in the early 70s.

I think it's a bit over the top to call Juan Velasco a tyrant. He certainly was a dictator, but there were no blood-baths. The land reforms he rather clumsily implemented certainly pissed off the landowners, but he didn't kill any of them. South America has seen a fair number of tyrants, and Velasco is in a different category.

In any event, Humala likes to list as influences well-known Peruvian lefties, starting with Mariátegui and Haya de la Torre, and Velasco naturally falls into that list. García, on the other hand, sticks with Haya de la Torre (the founder of Apra).

Listening to both of them, right now, it's pretty hard to distinguish them politically. But that's all part of an election campaign; Humala is clearly trying to present a moderate image, and García is trying to overcome the disastrous result of his first presidency, during which he was certainly more radical than he is today. (Personally I think that the vilification of García's first presidency is somewhat exaggerated, although one cannot exaggerate the financial collapse which Perú experienced; however, at least some of the blame ought to be assigned to the IMF and the rest of the international financial establishment, to say nothing of the Peruvian elite. But that's another story.)

The most interesting (or at least amusing) thing right now is watching as the Peruvian right gradually realizes that they really are going to have to choose between García and Humala in the run-off elections.


From: Lima, Perú | Registered: Jun 2002  |  IP: Logged
Stockholm
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posted 19 April 2006 01:00 AM      Profile for Stockholm     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
I guess I'm just very leery of autocratic military men who make very base appeals to populism and have no r3eal party behind them. If i were Peruvian, I'd feel more secure with Garcia.
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rici
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posted 19 April 2006 01:41 AM      Profile for rici     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Originally posted by Stockholm:
I guess I'm just very leery of autocratic military men who make very base appeals to populism and have no r3eal party behind them. If i were Peruvian, I'd feel more secure with Garcia.

We'll see in early June, I guess. It's certainly a decision that every Peruvian will have to make. From what I can see, there are quite a few apristas, as there always have been, and a bunch of Peruvians who could be described as feeling "less insecure" with García. Then there are a bunch of Peruvians who feel that they're just simply not represented at all, and that they therefore (a) have nothing to lose and (b) like what Humala is saying. The question will be how big each group is I have quite a bit of sympathy for all three (aside from a few jerks, of course).

The electoral office claims that it will have a definitive result of the first round by this weekend. Then at least we'll know for sure who the run-off contestants are. It's a wierd feeling. It's kind of like the election is happening on a VCR and someone has pressed the "pause" button.


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Wilf Day
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posted 19 April 2006 03:31 AM      Profile for Wilf Day     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Originally posted by rici:
The most interesting (or at least amusing) thing right now is watching as the Peruvian right gradually realizes that they really are going to have to choose between García and Humala in the run-off elections.

Which raises the topic: how will either of them govern?

Garcia could, in theory, rely alternately on either the right or Humala's party to support his legislative programme. But a left-right accord could destroy his base, couldn't it? But a left-Humala accord seems unlikely when they are running against each other, or is it?

Humala's position seems worse. Needing 61 seats for a majority, and having 43?? Even an unlikely alliance with the Fujimoristas (13 seats?) leaves him short. Who else might ally with him? Anyone?

So, if the right are not to be given a veto over the new president, is there any real alternative to a post-election Garcia-Humala accord in Congress? Could it happen?

[ 19 April 2006: Message edited by: Wilf Day ]


From: Port Hope, Ontario | Registered: Oct 2002  |  IP: Logged
rici
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posted 19 April 2006 10:19 AM      Profile for rici     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Originally posted by Wilf Day:

Which raises the topic: how will either of them govern?

Garcia could, in theory, rely alternately on either the right or Humala's party to support his legislative programme. But a left-right accord could destroy his base, couldn't it? But a left-Humala accord seems unlikely when they are running against each other, or is it?


I'd say an accord between APRA and UPP is plausible. Their respective programs (as published) are similar enough that agreement should be possible.

García could also put together an accord between APRA, UN and FC (and RN if they pass the threshold). Apra has entered into coalitions with the right before and it didn't quite destroy their base. Since García has both options, he will have some bargaining power (if he wins).

My guess is that the Fujimoristas will insist on some kind of deal on Fujimori before entering into a coalition with anyone. That would be unpleasant.


From: Lima, Perú | Registered: Jun 2002  |  IP: Logged
Wilf Day
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posted 19 April 2006 11:14 AM      Profile for Wilf Day     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Originally posted by rici:
I'd say an accord between APRA and UPP is plausible. Their respective programs (as published) are similar enough that agreement should be possible.

But in that case, as the Congressional results sink in, would supporters of everyone but Garcia and Humala say "we have a false choice before us, these two will govern whichever wins, might as well stay home"? Or would they say "better vote for Garcia, better the devil we know than someone who wants to overturn everything and convene a constituent assembly"? Or would they say "Let the outsider win and watch him screw up"?

From: Port Hope, Ontario | Registered: Oct 2002  |  IP: Logged
rici
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posted 19 April 2006 11:27 AM      Profile for rici     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Originally posted by Wilf Day:

But in that case, as the Congressional results sink in, would supporters of everyone but Garcia and Humala say "we have a false choice before us, these two will govern whichever wins, might as well stay home"? Or would they say "better vote for Garcia, better the devil we know than someone who wants to overturn everything and convene a constituent assembly"? Or would they say "Let the outsider win and watch him screw up"?

Some of them will say each of the above. That is what will make the second round interesting And another possible thought might be "better vote for García, he's less likely to ignore my party".

About 12% of the first-round ballots were blank (voting is obligatory in Perú, so blank ballots are common; 12% is about average). About 47% of the votes went to Humala and García combined. That leaves just over 40% of the electorate. My guess is that somewhere between a quarter and a third of those will not care to choose between the second-round candidates, so the second-round blank ballot count will be in the vicinity of 20-25%.


From: Lima, Perú | Registered: Jun 2002  |  IP: Logged
rici
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posted 25 April 2006 08:43 PM      Profile for rici     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
With more than 99% of the ballots officially processed, it finally seems clear that the second round will be between Ollanta Humala and Alan García. The first post-first-round poll came out today, indicating that García has a small advantage over Humala, presumably because the right-wing, lacking a candidate, are prepared to "hold their nose and vote for García," as more than one commentator has said.

The second round will be on May 28. I'm not going to be around for the campaign, unfortunately, but I recommend The UBC Peru weblog for anyone who is interested in following it.

The "free trade" agreement with the United States will unavoidably be part of the campaign, particularly with Hugo Chávez's announcement this week that Venezuela will leave the Community of Andean Nations, followed by his announcement today that he might reconsider if Colombia and Perú fail to ratify the agreement as suggested by Evo Morales. (Oddly, the only people in Perú who seem happy with Chávez's attempt to destroy CAN are the most right-wing of the business associations, who have been trying to sabotage CAN for years.)

Other issues, of course, will be the accusations against Humala for human rights violations and Humala's refusal to appear in court in the trial of his brother, and similarly the accusations of human rights violations during the previous García presidency, to say nothing of the economic disaster during that presidency. In short, both Humala and García are in the position of having to say "that was then, this is now".


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cco
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posted 25 May 2006 09:55 PM      Profile for cco     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Humala closing in
From: Montréal | Registered: Apr 2005  |  IP: Logged
M. Spector
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posted 04 June 2006 08:10 PM      Profile for M. Spector   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Garcia Near Win in Peru Presidential Vote

Sunday, June 4, 2006; 10:48 PM

quote:
Former President Alan Garcia, whose 1985-90 government left Peru mired in guerrilla violence and economic chaos, appeared headed toward victory over nationalist ex-army officer Ollanta Humala in Sunday's presidential runoff.

A stunning comeback seemed imminent for a man whose name had been equated with political disaster _ along with a rejection of a political upstart enthusiastically endorsed by Venezuela's anti-U.S. president, Hugo Chavez.

Garcia led with 55.5 percent of the vote against 44.5 percent for Humala, according to an official count of 77.3 percent of ballots.



From: One millihelen: The amount of beauty required to launch one ship. | Registered: Feb 2005  |  IP: Logged
Ken Burch
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posted 04 June 2006 08:18 PM      Profile for Ken Burch     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Weird. When Garcia left office last time, he was considered an incompetent and a disgrace by almost everyone in Peru. How could anyone with a rep that bad ever make a comeback?
From: A seedy truckstop on the Information Superhighway | Registered: Feb 2005  |  IP: Logged
M. Spector
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posted 04 June 2006 08:54 PM      Profile for M. Spector   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
This time he got the right-wing vote.
From: One millihelen: The amount of beauty required to launch one ship. | Registered: Feb 2005  |  IP: Logged
Ken Burch
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posted 04 June 2006 08:55 PM      Profile for Ken Burch     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Oh, great.
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ceti
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posted 05 June 2006 05:46 AM      Profile for ceti     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
There seems to have been a lot of fearmongering against Chavez during the run-off election, including this interesting story: Self proclaimed Soldier claims Venezuelan Plot to Destabilize Peru

Basically, Garcia won because of his extensive party patronage networks, his own slick personage, the inexperience and lack of party support for Ollanta, the anti-Chavez (upper-middle class) vote instigated by the major media, and planted stories like this to further the perception that outsiders (Venezuela) was interfering with the elections (if it the story is found to be false, what would happen??)

Anyways, Garcia has emerged as very anti-Chavez (who led a coup against his close ally and friend Carlos Andres Perez), setting up an uncomfortable dynamic for the next few years. It seems as if the Bolivarian revolution is beginning to experience the same problems that Bolivar faced!


From: various musings before the revolution | Registered: Jan 2005  |  IP: Logged
josh
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posted 05 June 2006 06:01 AM      Profile for josh     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
While it's inevitable that Chavez will be demonized by the North American press, he's also done some things lately to make it easier for them to demonize him, like coming out and endorsing Humala. He'd be better advised to lay low, at least until the Mexican election next month.
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ceti
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posted 05 June 2006 06:56 AM      Profile for ceti     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
You're right, he needs to keep a low profile. It's a Catch-22, but probably better for the long term.

The media had already reached this racist low point in Peru:

[ 05 June 2006: Message edited by: ceti ]


From: various musings before the revolution | Registered: Jan 2005  |  IP: Logged
M. Spector
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posted 05 June 2006 02:53 PM      Profile for M. Spector   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Originally posted by Stockholm:
I think Garcia is the best of the three. Flores is too rightwing and Humala seems to have a little too little commitment to things like democracy and feedom of the press and professes to admire a tyrnnical military dictator whop ruled Peru in the early 70s.

I reject military dictatorship and suppression of democracy regardless of whether it is by governments with rightwing or leftwing economic policies.

Garcia is from a party APRA that has a very long tradition of being a DEMOCRATIC socialist party along the lines of the NDP in Canada.

Surley there is no other option for people who believe in social justice within a democracic system of government.


Well, at least Stockholm is happy!

From: One millihelen: The amount of beauty required to launch one ship. | Registered: Feb 2005  |  IP: Logged
jeff house
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posted 05 June 2006 03:48 PM      Profile for jeff house     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Alan Garcia is "democratic", but unfortunately it is a certainty that he will do nothing for the hungry people of Peru.

His base is middle class, and he leans right on most issues.

The reason that the far left actually gets support in Latin America, and the reason that "democracy" isn't so high on the scale of values there, is that it really hurts to have no food, no house, and no education.

The one question which the right cannot answer, when it is put to them by Chavez, or Castro, or Lula, is: "Y ellos? Que hicieron?" (And that bunch, what did they DO?") What did they DO during the years of deprivation? For Alan Garcia, the answer is already in. He did nothing.


From: toronto | Registered: May 2001  |  IP: Logged
Ken Burch
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posted 05 June 2006 05:02 PM      Profile for Ken Burch     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
From everything I'd read before the election, Humala was always considered to have a lot of weaknesses that Chavez and Morales did not have.

I don't know that this can be taken as an overall setback for the Latin American left, but it does argue for finding stronger candidates.

For Peru, the question is what will happen internally, especially if, having been elected by a center-right "unpopular front" coalition, Garcia feels obligated to implement a hard line "Washington Consensus" program. Will Garcia find himself, in six or eight months from now, hanging onto power solely by sicking the riot squads on the vast majority of the Peruvian people?


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rici
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posted 06 June 2006 10:29 AM      Profile for rici     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Ceti:
Basically, Garcia won because of his extensive party patronage networks, his own slick personage, the inexperience and lack of party support for Ollanta, the anti-Chavez (upper-middle class) vote instigated by the major media, and...

That's one way of looking at it. On the other hand, one could ask "How did Humala emerge so rapidly as a major political figure in Perú?" and the answer might be: because of his own populist image, the organized and historical anti-Aprista campaign conducted by the media throughout most of the recent history of Perú, and the major financial contributions from some rich businessmen of questionable motives.

Neither of those answers is particularly satisfactory, though. Both García and Humala have personalities which appeal to particular segments of the Peruvian population (and neither of them are particularly attractive to the wealthy). García's victory was undoubtedly assisted by the fact that APRA is the only well-organized Peruvian political party: neither the right nor the left has been willing or able to create the consensus and invest the resources into building alternative parties.

In programmatic terms, listening to the two candidates (and their advisors) in the debates leading up to the second-round election, it was pretty hard to distinguish between them. So the difference is either a question of style, or the expectation created that their actual programs would diverge in particular directions from their electoral platforms.

quote:
Jeff House:
The one question which the right cannot answer, when it is put to them by Chavez, or Castro, or Lula, is: "Y ellos? Que hicieron?" (And that bunch, what did they DO?") What did they DO during the years of deprivation? For Alan Garcia, the answer is already in. He did nothing.

I don't think that is a fair reading of García's first presidency, although it was a presidency with many problems. García was elected in 1985 running pretty well on the platform that Humala is identified with today: fierce opposition to international financial institutions and neoliberalism, state intervention in support of the poor, nationalisation of resources. And he actually followed through on that: he stood up to the IMF which promptly withdrew support for Perú; he created major programs in support of agricultors (and also in support of culture); he promoted nationalisation, to the point of attempting to nationalise the banking sector.

Like the Humala of today, the García of 1985 reached out to some "national" business interests on the theory that "national" capital is better than "international" capital.

In the beginning, these policies did in fact reduce poverty, stimulate the economy, and even reduce inflation. Unfortunately, they were not sustainable in the face of a counter-attack by the IMF, the crisis in resource prices which devastated most South American economies in the 1980s, and the ferocious and cold-blooded opposition of Sendero Luminoso. The supposed allies in the Peruvian business community -- the so-called "12 Apostles" -- turned out to be more loyal to their bank accounts than to Peruvians. García's attempt to nationalise the banking industry was almost certainly a desperate manouevre to staunch the massive outflow of capital. In the end, the economy collapsed.

There were other problems with the Apra government of 1985-1990, including serious human rights violations and generalised patronage and low-level corruption. These were arguably exacerbated by inexperience and over-enthusiasm.

Still, it seems that García tried to do something for poor Peruvians, just as there is quite a bit of evidence that Humala would like to do so. A Humala government of today would not have to face all the problems that García had to confront in 1985, but he would have shared some of them: inexperience, confrontationalism, and questionable allies.

quote:
Jeff House:
Alan Garcia is "democratic", but unfortunately it is a certainty that he will do nothing for the hungry people of Peru.
His base is middle class, and he leans right on most issues.

I hope that it is not a certainty, although García's victory speech was not all that encouraging ("gradual change" was one of the themes). It is true that the García of today (García v2.0 as it were) does lean right on many issues, and Apra was deeply scarred by its previous experience in government.

I don't agree that Apra's base is "middle class", whatever that might mean in the Peruvian context. Certainly, in this election Apra benefitted from the support of the upper and middle class, but that's a small percentage of the Peruvian population. Polling results show that the poorest segments of the population were pretty well evenly split between García and Humala (both in the first and the second round).

The division is more accurately expressed as a geographical divide: Apra support is higher in the more urbanized coast; Humala's support is much higher in the sierra, particularly in rural communities.

Another significant division is the gender gap: throughout the campaign, Humala consistently failed to attract the female vote. Polling just before the second round (which was pretty consistent with the final result) showed the following:

Male: Humala 51%, García 49%
Female: García 61%, Humala 39%

Presumably Humala's military background and generally confrontational message were more appealing to men than to women.


From: Lima, Perú | Registered: Jun 2002  |  IP: Logged
RandomRogue
recent-rabble-rouser
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posted 08 June 2006 01:43 PM      Profile for RandomRogue        Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Well, a dissapointing outcome, I suppose - although predictable given that the two were fairly close on the first ballot - and the votes going to the Conservative candidate weren't likely to flow to Humala.

On the bright side, Garcia is still fairly socialist in many regards. He has just toned it down since the last time, he was President and underestimated the corporate will to ensure corporate exploitation. Hopefully, he will find a more balanced approach this time around.


From: Toronto | Registered: Jun 2006  |  IP: Logged
Stockholm
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posted 09 June 2006 07:43 AM      Profile for Stockholm     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
How can it be dissappointing when a democrat defeats an autocrat?
From: Toronto | Registered: Sep 2002  |  IP: Logged
josh
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posted 09 June 2006 08:03 AM      Profile for josh     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Huh? How is he an autocrat? Next, you're going to say that Fujimori was a democrat.
From: the twilight zone between the U.S. and Canada | Registered: Aug 2002  |  IP: Logged
N.Beltov
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posted 09 June 2006 08:28 AM      Profile for N.Beltov   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
The new President belongs to the comprador tradition. Garcia "happens" to support the Washington Consensus and will dutifully surrender his nation's sovereignty to the Bush administration.

Was the demonstration election legit? The U.S. has a long history of staging these sorts of elections. One commentator notes that,

quote:
[An important question is ....(N.Beltov)] who's allowed to vote and who isn't. For many weeks before the Colombian and Peruvian elections, CIA, National Endowment for Democracy (NED), US Agency for International Development (USAID) and International Republican Institute (IRI) operatives were all over both countries, setting in place the process needed to assure both their candidates won regardless of whether the majority of people wanted them.

Peru will find its Sendero Luminoso when the movement that bears the name of the greatest South American patriot, Simon Bolivar, comes to that country. Let's hope that it is sooner rather than later.

"It's not the people who vote that count; it's the people who count the votes."

[ 09 June 2006: Message edited by: N.Beltov ]


From: Vancouver Island | Registered: May 2003  |  IP: Logged
Stockholm
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 3138

posted 09 June 2006 08:40 AM      Profile for Stockholm     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Huh? How is he an autocrat? Next, you're going to say that Fujimori was a democrat.

First of all I don't regard Fujimori as a democrat at all. he was more of a fascist dictator.

Humala = autocratic military general making base appeals to populism, expressing admiration for past Peruvian military dictators, thought to have committed atrocities while leading Fujimori's fight against the Shining Path, has no real party behind and his campaign sounded like just a fascistic personality cult dressed up in a bit of pseudo-leftwing rhetoric.

Garcia = from one of the oldest social democratic parties in the western world, was very anti-American and anti-IMF when he was President in the 80s and is clearly committed to the democratic process.


From: Toronto | Registered: Sep 2002  |  IP: Logged
josh
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posted 09 June 2006 10:35 AM      Profile for josh     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Oooh. Making "base appeals to populism." How scary. Next thing you know, he'll criticize neo-liberal market orthodoxy and globalization. Give me a break. And just because he was a general, doesn't make him autocratic. In his new incarnation, Garcia has promised to be a good puppy and support the so-called "free trade" agreement with the U.S.
From: the twilight zone between the U.S. and Canada | Registered: Aug 2002  |  IP: Logged
Stockholm
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posted 09 June 2006 10:39 AM      Profile for Stockholm     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
I'm sorry, but I just don't like the sound of military men in politics with a history of committing atrocities and who express admiration for dictators and whose entire campaign is based on a personality cult.
From: Toronto | Registered: Sep 2002  |  IP: Logged
josh
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posted 09 June 2006 10:50 AM      Profile for josh     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
I believe the accusation, which has not be proved, is that he participated in torture, not atrocities.
From: the twilight zone between the U.S. and Canada | Registered: Aug 2002  |  IP: Logged
Michelle
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posted 09 June 2006 12:19 PM      Profile for Michelle   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Torture isn't an atrocity?
From: I've got a fever, and the only prescription is more cowbell. | Registered: May 2001  |  IP: Logged
ceti
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posted 09 June 2006 01:19 PM      Profile for ceti     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
So who was giving the orders to terminate the Shining Path with extreme prejudice?

The civilian authorities are responsible for setting policies that the military has to implement. They can't wash their hands in this.


From: various musings before the revolution | Registered: Jan 2005  |  IP: Logged
rici
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Babbler # 2710

posted 09 June 2006 05:31 PM      Profile for rici     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Originally posted by ceti:
So who was giving the orders to terminate the Shining Path with extreme prejudice?

The accusations against Humala are not that he committed atrocities against Sendero Luminoso. To be honest, I doubt whether many people in Perú really care how Sendero was treated. Sendero is generally considered to be the most cold-bloodedly murderous band this side of the Khmer Rouge. It's actually a remarkable testimony to something that major Sendero leaders are alive and in jail. (The treatment by Fujimori of the MRTA is in a different category, but that has nothing to do with Humala as far as I know.)

The accusations against Humala are that he committed atrocities against civilians. There are also a variety of questions about his support for the abortive uprising conducted by his brother Antauro, which left several policemen dead. Antauro is still in jail, and Ollanta refused to testify in Antauro's trial taking refuge in a Peruvian law which allows close relatives to not testify in trials of family members. Ollanta has not been charged with involvement in that uprising and he was formally pardoned for the earlier uprising he did lead, with Antauro. (There are some questions about that incident, as well -- some people feel that it was a piece of theatre providing a smokescreen for the abrupt departure of Montesinos the same night. I personally don't believe that, but it is an odd coincidence and there are conflicting reports.)

As for whether or not Humala is "autocratic": he claims to be a believer in democracy, and maybe he is. On the other hand, he insists on being addressed as "comandante" (he was not a general), and he closed his last pre-election meeting with the words: "Les pido que este domingo le permitan a este comandante comandar los destinos del país" -- "I ask you, on Sunday, to allow this commander to command the destiny of the country." Could just be a turn of phrase, though.

As for N. Beltov's claim that the election was staged by the United States, I find that hard to believe. In Perú, votes are counted at each polling station by three people who are chosen at random from the electorate in that district; political parties are also allowed to send observers. In the remote rural areas where Humala gained a lot of votes, there were few observers, but on the other hand it is highly likely that the polling officials were all Humala supporters.

Both the OAS observation mission (headed by Lloyd Axworthy) and the EU observation mission lauded the election as being conducted fairly. The results show a good correlation with exit polls and with the results of Transparencia (a Peruvian NGO which observes elections.)

It seems pretty clear that García won the election because the Lima upper and middle class chose to vote for him in the second round. That basically balanced the Humala vote in the south of the country, and the "solid north" -- the traditionally Aprista regions in the northern coast -- delivered the Apra vote, as they have done in election after election.

After the first round of the election, I estimated that García would win by 53 to 47 per cent. (I thought I posted that here, but I can't find it so I guess it was in the Peru election blog.) He actually won by 52.6 to 47.4; I don't say that to brag about my predictive abilities, but simply to show that the result was predictable given the sizes of the various constituencies in Perú. (Although it was a pretty good prediction )

Finally, about the "free trade" agreement. I think García will support the agreement, in the end, unfortunately. But he has not promised to do so; he's been very ambiguous about it. Debate on the agreement started this week in Congress (that is, the Congress which will be replaced on July 28, not the one which was just elected); Apra's legislators were conspicuously absent, and the Prime Minister was annoyed: he is demanding that García clarify his support for the FTA.

In a press conference this morning for foreign journalists, García deflected questions about the FTA, saying that the "most anti-imperialist strategy is South American unity" and encouraging Venezuela to rejoin the Andean Confederation in order to pursue trade agreements with the European Union and thereby dilute the influence of the US.

I expect that García's discourse will shift towards the left over the next few weeks. Now that he's been elected, he really doesn't need to worry about the right-wing vote. He got those votes, and they can't take them back now. However, he didn't get a majority in Congress, and there is no obvious majority coalition either.

From a programmatic point of view, he could easily form a coalition with the UPP (Humala's party) -- there really is a lot of coincidence between their platforms -- but that's not in the cards; Humala has to continue to play the role of opposition, particularly since regional elections (essentially provincial elections) are coming up in November.

On the other hand, the UPP is by no means solid: it is an uneasy alliance between a sort of left-wing party and Humala's own Nationalist party. (The Nationalist Party couldn't manage to get itself registered in time for the election, so Humala shopped around for an existing party which was willing to accept Nationalist candidates.) If the UPP split into its two consituent parts, the UPP caucus could become a governing partner with Apra while the PNP caucus would still be the largest opposition caucus.

García can't do much to encourage that other than demonstrate that he has not been bought out by right-wing votes by shifting his discourse to the left; he certainly has lots of room to do so, and it might have the side-effect of solidifying his support within his own party.


From: Lima, Perú | Registered: Jun 2002  |  IP: Logged
M. Spector
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 8273

posted 09 June 2006 09:11 PM      Profile for M. Spector   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Hey, rici!

Nice to see you back. We missed you.


From: One millihelen: The amount of beauty required to launch one ship. | Registered: Feb 2005  |  IP: Logged
rici
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 2710

posted 09 June 2006 10:11 PM      Profile for rici     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Originally posted by M. Spector:
Nice to see you back. We missed you.

Thanks, I missed you all, too! But I had a nice vacation.


From: Lima, Perú | Registered: Jun 2002  |  IP: Logged
ceti
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 7851

posted 10 June 2006 05:42 AM      Profile for ceti     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Yeah, your UBC blog is pretty cool.

The jury is still way out on Garcia. The country is racially and class-wise divided, as I would say the difference between Spanish Lima and Incan Cusco where respective majorities were earned by each leader.


From: various musings before the revolution | Registered: Jan 2005  |  IP: Logged

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