Archive for June, 2005
Bazo, Fabiola
Bazo, Fabiola. 2000. Peru’s 2000 Presidential Election FOCAL Brief, Ottawa.
Overview of the election in 2000.
Cameron, Maxwell A.
Cameron, Maxwell A. Forthcoming. Endogenous Regime Breakdown: The Vladivideo and the Fall of Peru’s Fujimori in Julio Carrión, ed. The Fujimori Legacy. University Park, Pennsylvania: The Penn State University Press, forthcoming in 2006.
Analysis of the rise and fall of President Alberto Fujimori (1990-2000), and the concentration of political power in the hands of a clique around the president and informal security advisor Vladimiro Montesinos.
CPI June 2005 Poll: 2/3 voters undecided
2/3rds of the population don’t know for whom they will vote, according to a June CPI poll. Another poll, conducted by IDICE, shows those who favor Fujimori (although he cannot be a candidate) would shift their vote to Alan Garcia if Fujimori does not run.
A Christmas Surprise
The Secretary General of “Si Cumple”, the electoral machine connected to Alberto Fujimori, has announced that the former president will return to Peru in December 2005.
The Next President–A Woman?
A recent poll suggests Peruvians are willing to consider voting for a woman for president.
Too many parties
An editorial by Fernando Tuesta warns that there may be as many as 30 parties registering in the next elections. He notes that could make Peru even more difficult to govern.
He makes two very sensible proposals: impose a minimum level of votes to get seats in congress, and hold congressional elections after the presidential elections.
Peru’s presidential system of government make these reforms more imperative. In a presidential system with a large number of parties, the chances to the executive having a majority in congress is low. In a country like Peru, where the rule of law is weak, this often results in illicit coalitions and vote buying.
Barometro June 2005: Non-Confidence in electoral system
A new poll by Universidad de Lima shows that Peruvians have lost confidence in their electoral institutions and distrust electoral authorities. A vast majority of Peruvians have little confidence in the ONPE or JNE. The poll also showed that no single candidate commands a strong lead among the field of potential contenders for the presidency.
Will Fujimori Run?
Fujimori announced his intention to run yesterday. raising the specter of a major legal battle….
About Maxwell A. Cameron
Maxwell A. Cameron teaches in the Department of Political Science at the University of British Columbia. His research on Peru dates to the 1980s when he wrote his doctoral dissertation (University of California, Berkeley, 1989). The dissertation was published as Democracy and Authoritarianism in Peru (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1994). He co-edited The Peruvian Labyrinth (University Park, Pennsylvania: The Penn State University Press, 1997) with Phil Mauceri. Cameron has also written about NAFTA and the international campaign to ban landmines. More recently he co-authored “Democracy Without Parties? Political Parties and Regime Change in Fujimori’s Peru,” Latin American Politics and Society (Vol. 45, no. 3, 2003, with Steve Levitsky), and his essay “Endogenous Regime Breakdown: The Vladivideo and the Fall of Peru’s Fujimori” recently appeared in a volume edited by Julio Carrion, entitled The Fujimori Legacy (University Park, Pennsylvania: The Penn State University Press, 2006). In the fall of 2005, Cameron was the Canadian Bicentennial Professor at the Yale Center for International and Area Studies at Yale University. He will spend January-May in Peru studying the general election as it unfolds. Cameron has recently begun to blog for The Guardian at Comment is free…
About Fabiola Bazo
Fabiola Bazo is a research consultant based in Vancouver, British Columbia. Educated in economics at the Catholic University in Lima, Peru, and political science and public policy at Carleton University in Ottawa, she specializes in public policy and gender issues in Latin America. Bazo worked with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation during the hostage crisis in 1997, and was consulted by the Department of Foreign Affairs in Canada during the elections and their aftermath in Peru in 2000. She was Advisor in the Women’s Committee in the Peruvian Congress in 1996 and has worked with international non-govermental organizations in Canada and the United States. In the fall of 2005, Bazo will be a Research Affiliate at the Council on Latin American and Iberian Studies at the Yale Center for International and Area Studies and will spend January-April 2006 in Peru analyzing and reporting on the general election.
Welcome
This website has been created to chronicle, analyze and comment on the Peruvian general elections to be held in April 2006. The elections offer an opportunity to assess the quality of democracy in Peru, the prospects for revival of political party organizations, the role of the grassroots and women in politics, the impact of inequality and neoliberalism on politics, and the role of the international community in the promotion and defence of democracy.