10:00 P.M.: ONPE Presidential Results at 80.68% – Valid Votes

Please with thanks in advance, some analysis from folks here about what might happen if there is a runoff between:
1. Humala and Garcia
2. Humala and Flores
I thought I had caught a bug of some kind but the knot in my stomach comes from a very different place!!!
A la vida!
Sasha

I have checked the ONPE Website and it seems that most results from outside Peru have not yet been added up.
However a National Unity Government would be very week in congress, it would have to make many concessions to APRA. I an sure how good that would be.

Looks like it will be Garcia and Humala. Whatever it is, it is sure that the people want change. It’s outrageous that Peru has this upperclass of less than 15% who control the money, the land and the media and none of this trickles down to the 50% living in poverty. Especially since the upper class has enriched itself so much on mineral rights. That wasn’t an upperclass value add. Once the economy is integrated with everyone participating, Peru will take off.

Según el Comercio de hoy día los extranjeros han votado por Lourdes (57,6%). La pagina oficiál de ONPE es muy lento y actualizado muy poco. Espero que al fin podemos leer los estadisticas detaillidas allá tambien.

You don’t even know me, so who the heck are you. I have every right to comment. This is the internet you moron. Your attitude is what got Peru into trouble in the first place. Obviously if so many professional types hadn’t left they would have had enough votes to put Lourdes in office now. No one pushed Peru back centuries, it was never up centuries. Who cares what happened in the past, this is all about the future. In a democracy, the majority rules, and they’re ruling now. If you’re one of the 15% with money, good for you. Book your flight. Peru is going in a different direction and long term it will be better for the majority rather than the 15% who have robbed it blind for generations and played shell games with it’s successes to keep the indigenous people behind.

Max, thank goodness I don’t know you. You can yap all you want, it still doesn’t mean you know anything about what you’re talking about. Sure its the internet, but I come here to be informed, not listen to useless BS.
My attitude has nothing to do with Peru’s troubles. Also, I’m not the 15% rich. When I was younger, Garcia won the election because he came to my town and gave everybody a chicken, just like every other little town in Peru. Voting in Peru is obligatory, so those who give a chicken, get the vote.
After 7000% inflation, nacionalization and subsequent collapse of industries that had 100+ year histories, etc, etc, etc, we had to wait in line 1 hour for a liter of milk and bread. Why would I want to go back to that life? Where do you think the money will come from if not a business friendly environment and foreign investment? This isn’t Venezuela with billions of barrels of oil in reserve and outrageous oil prices.
“15% who have been robbing it for generations”????? is that what your social studies professor at UC Hippy told you? Wake up.

@ Max…
one little thing… How would you like to get the money when there would be no rich. I’m originally not from Peru so I can see quite well what it is all about. The people that are rich now, are those that fought fot that. The average Peruvian works and works and doesn’t get any further. They don’t have the mind of being rich ever. They don’t look for new oppurtunities to climb up. They just keep on selling their candies for all their life and then they dye. It’s sad to see but it’s like that.
One little thing more to everybody that reads this: don’t vote blanco. That’s helping your enemy. Vote for the one that is the best.

Abrazos to Javier and Pepe. I have been fortunate not have had to go through what you and others experienced under Alan Garcia and understand why you would not want to go back *there*.
You have every right to mourn the losses experienced by Peruvians and to be concerned for the future of your country.
You also have every right to stand up to someone who thinks he knows it all. Enough of know it alls, especially those who call others “moron”. Peruvians have had enough of being called names when they speak truth to power, perceived or otherwise.
A la vida!
Claire

The margin between Garcia and Flores is so small. I really think the overseas vote can overcome it. My parents voted in Miami, Florida, USA. They told me there was overwhelming support for Flores there.
I’m definitely with you, Javier, Pepe and Peruvian.

Peru isn’t impacted by anti-globalization. It’s being impacted by globalization. For the first time in years, there are secondary forces competing with the U.S. for South American natural resources such as Venezuelan oil and Peruvian copper in a big way. Peru would be right to take advantage of this and renegotiate it’s agreements in particular with the U.S. for the benefit of everyone including the 82% mestizo / indian population. This is all happening on the internet. This is globalization.

I just want to say something about our critique of the top 15% in Peru– I don’t see any middle class or rich Americans/Canadians prepared to give up their suburban houses, their suvs, their dinners out or their credit cards to go live in Peru, with insecurity, bad schools, bad health service, etc. It is very easy to blame the Peruvian ‘blancos’ as more evil, or more responsible than us Americans/Canadians/Europeans for the state of the world and the mess that countries like Peru find themselves in. I would ask gringos to take a hard look at their own prosperity before they go accusing others of being evil for not sacrificing a middle class life style. If you want to have a political commitment with the world (which is just another kind of imperialistic attitude in my opinion) you need to go beyond “che” guevarra’s image and motor cycle diaries movies or just paying lip service to the fact that you are liberal or progressive, shopping at Whole Foods and buying your fair trade coffee. When you talk about the ‘petucos’ in Peru, the top 15%, we are not talking rich people like Bill Gates or the Bush family in most cases. They have a middle class lifestyle like you and me. It is very different to think about the masses when the masses are in other country and do not challenge your way of living, because in case you didn’t notice — gringolandia makes up the top 15% of the world.

Juan, if would help if you could you give us the source. Where did you hear that Humala will take control of TV and radio.
Thanks
Fabi

To Max and others:
People should know that Ollanta is an ex-alumni of the infamous “school of the americas”.
He even placed this in his public CV available at the ONPE.
All discussions are kind of pointless when we have doubts who is behind each candidate
Javier

The follwowing is a recent article by reuters news agency with regard to the macro economic position of presidential candidate Ollanta Humala.
http://today.reuters.com/investing/financeArticle.aspx?type=bondsNews&storyID=2006-04-10T194031Z_01_N10339502_RTRIDST_0_PERU-ELECTION-HUMALA-PICTURE.XML
Also a person who made a comment about Mr. Humala’s anti-semitic leanings did not support their argument. Humala after such criticisms early on met with leaders of the country’s jewish community and even obtained their support. Also Islamic people are semetic and we all know that their is a palestinian in Humala’s congressional contingency.
Thanks you
Victor E. Ramos

There are two critiques of the current candidates who are leading the polls who represent what some might deem the corrupt left and the authoritarian left. Between the two and perhaps other remnants of splinter center left groups the tally is that the majority of the population is a candidate who represents a particular economic model.
Also again taking into account a well organized campaign by the socialist party and the humanrights NGOs, which collected signatures that were affirmed by the JNE to give rise to a call for a referendum on free trade to be convoked by conress, and marched along with small scale agricultural producers and other sectors of the working class against an agreement as it now stands and for revision for consistency with the needs or interest of non export led sectors of peruvian society, it would seem that the majority is again challenging neoliberal economics.
Again the conclusion is that the market has one no group deemed leftist, save for the sanguinary and seriously misled remnants of the PCP SL, call for full on socialistic or communistic adaptation of the economy. What these groups are calling for under different parties is for a greater regulatory role in assessing the benefits and detriments of exchange with an increasingly multi global, and some might say multi-polar world.
This is not to say, that export led growth should suffer or be constricted for it is one engine of an economy but if the nation seeks to build alternative engines, not dependent a particularly uneven unipolar model, this era appears to be the correct time to undergo such experimentation. This may be the direction the south will head wether under APRA or PNP/UPP.
Also a last point I acknowledge the affinity many peruvians have for Ms. Flores Nano, she is an accomplished person, a law professor, an accomplished lawyer, a woman who has made considerable advances, even if some might say this has been arrived at through her class status.
However, there has been a democratically elected technocrat with impressive credentials, and an atuhoritarian president democratically elected surrounded by neo-liberal technocrats and neither has been able to shift the gains to those sectors who are in need of it most. What is to say that the present technocrat will not do likewise is anybodys guesse. However, I will not entertain conjecture as some on this site do. What I do know is that both as an accomplishment and as a potential yellow flag Ms. Flores Nano was also one of the youngest person at the 1992 Davos World Economic Forum, which is described by many social justice activist around the world as sort of a who’s who of the most powerful corporations meeting to discuss economic policies that have been and are beeing challenged world wide for their effects on teh environment reduction in health and safety standards for workers worldwide. Additionally one of the companies often at teh Davos Forum is Bechtel a corporation which under severl names attempted to privatize water services in Bolivia but which was kicked out of that country. Candidate of the Oligarchs? I don’t know?
Only the future will tell with any of these three who are leading the polls.
Lastly Glorisa was a smashing success at getting Alvaro Uribe elected under a similar “manos firmes” platform. Ask the peasants smashed by what many human rights and NGO’s deem the sixth division of the columbian army, the right wing paramilitaries who Uribe worked alongside with in his native state ofAntioquia, how they appreciate thos “manos firmes.” Now a right wing technocrat there also seeks to go beyond that country’s constitutional limit of one term in office. Violence from either side is very unfortunate. I hope the UN supporters who talk about “fe y serenidad” who tried to lynch a presidential candidate agree with me here. But by their acts on sunday I doubt it since these are probably the same people who attacked the Nisseis in Peru when Fujimori was galvanizing his campaign against the closet racist MVL.
I hope there is an article here on the aftermath of the elections and what strategies parties such as the socialist party of descentralization party assess after these elections.
Thank you,
Victor E. Ramos

The failure to produce a well reasoned argument in promotion of ones point of view is often reflected in persons who use CAPS!
Also terrorism was nurtured in the bosom of a country that turned its back on persons in the interior and in some part lashed out against them at the outset under the initial perception that it was a dreaded “indian uprising.” Think about the different terms used by peruvians with regard to shanty towns, migrants from the interior call them “pueblos jovenes,” whereas acriollized peruvians call them “invasions.” I dislike cowards like the shining path who use terror on people as much as the next person but apathy of the needs and desolation of the interior is a source of such afflictions. And in terms of combating terrorism, I have no opinion of Alan Garcia’s presidencey but Humala had worked in various provinces working with quechuas, aymaras, and ashaninkas, and organized ronderos. He does has fought on the fronts where terrorism. And if you want to know my kins village was occupied by those sendero dilenquents and my lucanas indian girlfriends kin were dissapeared by sendero. So I also share the pain many peruvians feel towards that tragic epoch in our history but I also yearn for a day that the people in the interior are treated with teh same dignity and respect that affluent people in teh posh suburbs of Lima receive.
I have also been to Oaxaca and Chiapas Mexico as a person who is also of indigenous roots the stories told to me by ethnic indians of Chiapas tzotzil, zoque was of a society before the uprising that held no repect for the Mayan people who inhabit that part of the country but after the emergence of the zapatista movement a sense of empowerment and a revindication of ethnic dignity emerged. I will not say this leads to the conclusion that PNP/UPP also represents this but I will say it is heart warming to see the wiphala, if you don’t know what it is then look it up, and the rainbow flag of an oppressed people raised with pride.
Thank you
preuanukuna runakuna kashkanki!

Hi, Barry. Yes, the abstention figure is pretty consistent with past election results. The fine is steep. About 140 Soles I believe. — Max