Archive for May, 2006
Financial Times: Bush administration and its Unlikely Ally
Latin America’s leaders have failed to stand up to Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez and his allies, to the irritation of the US. But if Alan García wins the presidential elections in Peru on Sunday, the Bush administration may find itself with an unlikely regional ally….Bush administration crosses fingers for García victory, by Hal Weitzman in Lima, Financial Times, June 1 2006 00:07
Venezuela, Peru, the OAS and now…Washington
The Venezuelan minister of foreign affairs, Alí Rodríguez, claims frictions between Venezuela and Peru are a bilateral issue not a multilateral one. Rodriguez argues that Peru’s complaint to the Organization of American States is part of a destabilizing plan designed from Washington.
El Comercio: E-mails Implicating A. García with A. Fujimori are a Fabrication
Opting for the Lesser Evil?
Women’s Issues in the Electoral Campaign
Candidates Ollanta Humala and Alan Garcia have paid lip services to women’s reproductive issues during this electoral campaign. Leading Peruvian feminists have little hope things would change if either of them is elected.
Public Statement against Impunity
OAS Electoral Mission: Foreign Interference in the Peruvian Electoral Process
For Lloyd Axworthy, head of the OAS’s observer mission in Peru, the international community and the OAS would better understand the impact of foreign interference with the electoral process taking place, if civil society, academia, all levels of government and political parties jointly take action to stand against what the Peruvian people consider an intervention with their democratic process.
Manuel Saavedra: Dirty Campaigning could increase Blank and Void Vote
Para el analista político Manuel Saavedra, los insultos entre los candidatos presidenciales pueden incrementar el voto en blanco y el viciado.
Police Report: Political Violence in Cusco
Three Ollanta Humala supporters were wounded during a clash between the supporters of Alan Garcia and Humala in Cusco last week. The police report indicates none of the wounded fired gunshots. This report contradicts Jorge Del Castillo’ version that a gunman, (wounded Vladimiro Santos) fired at the caravan carrying members of the APRA party.
Read also: Five Wounded in Battle Between APRA and UPP Militants in Cusco
The Peruvian Election, President Chávez & the OAS
On June 5th, a day after the election, Peru will complain to the Organization of American States General Assembly that Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez has repeatedly violated the principle of non-intervention by making statements against candidate Alan Garcia and in favour of Ollanta Humala. Peruvian authorities, politicians and international affairs analysts have rejected the statements made by Chavez.
Interview with Abraham Lowenthal
APRA y UPP aseguran personeros al 100%
UPP Dennounces Pact Between APRA and Fujimorismo II
ONPE ofrecerá primer reporte al 60% a las 9:00 pm del 4 de junio
Human Rights Groups: Madre Mia Allegations against Captain Carlos are True
La Coordinadora Nacional de Derechos Humanos (CNDDHH) has the “absolute certainty” there are elements of crimes against humanity perpetrated by Captain Carlos in Madre Mia in 1992. This was made public via a communiqué yesterday.
A False Dichotomy
By Maxwell A Cameron
Comment is Free… The Guardian, May 30, 2006 – 04:45 PM
On June 4 2006, Peruvian voters will choose their next president in a run-off between the top two contenders from the first-round election, which was held on April 9.
The polls put Alan García Pérez, the former president (1985-1990) and leader of the American Popular Revolutionary Alliance (APRA), ahead of Ollanta Humala Tasso, the outsider candidate and leader of the Union for Peru (UPP) who has aligned himself with presidents Hugo Chávez of Venezuela and Evo Morales of Bolivia.
It would be tempting, but wrong, to frame the decision as a choice between social democracy and radical populism. The Peruvian election exposes the fallacy of splitting the Latin American left into two great subspecies.
In a recent commentary in Foreign Affairs magazine, the noted intellectual Jorge Castañeda and former Mexican minister of foreign affairs wrote of “two lefts” – a “right” left and a “wrong” left. The “right” left is “modern, open-minded, reformist and internationalist”, although it springs from the “hard-core left of the past”; the “wrong” left, born of the great tradition of Latin American populism, is “nationalist, strident, and close-minded”.
Castañeda extols the virtues of Chile’s new president, Michelle Bachelet, Uruguay’s president, Tabaré Vásquez, and, with qualifications, Brazil’s President Luis Ignácio “Lula” da Silva; he excoriates the “wrong” left, as personified by Chávez, Morales, and Argentina’s Peronist President Néstor Kirchner. He does not mention APRA’s García but he lumps Humala together with Chávez and Morales.
It is true that there is a big difference between leaders like Chávez and Bachelet, but we should not assume that all leftwing movements in the region can be classified into moderate social democrats and radical populists. Peru illustrates why.
Neither Humala nor García fits comfortably within Castañeda’s dichotomy. García has sought to portray himself as a social democrat and an advocate of “responsible change.” Foreign and local investors embrace him as the best candidate to retain Peru’s pro-market, export-oriented economic model while pursuing reformist social policies. Yet APRA is the very embodiment of populism: it is a multi-class party led by a paternalistic leader who offers redistributive reforms in return for votes.
Humala is nowhere near as radical as Chávez. Nor does he have Morales’s democratic credentials. His programme is unmistakably social democratic. It is called “the great transformation”, in deference to Karl Polanyi, not Karl Marx. It proposes the development of internal markets, greater access to credit, support for agriculture, a renegotiation of the free trade agreement, food self-sufficiency, and the renegotiation of tax holidays or special royalty exemptions for foreign investors.
The programmatic differences between APRA and the UPP are so minimal that each side accuses the other of plagiarism.
The two candidates differ most in the sphere of politics. In the words of journalist Gustavo Gorriti: “Alan García could not be a dictator even if he wanted; Ollanta Humala could not be a democrat even if he tried.” In this view, García is the leader of an organised party and he would, in all likelihood, govern according to the democratic rules of the game. Within these democratic rules, however, García proposes the adoption of faceless judges in Peru’s courts as well as the establishment of the death penalty. He picked a vice-presidential running mate associated with a prison massacre for which he was responsible in 1986, and he refuses to accept the central findings of Peru’s truth and reconciliation commission.
As an outsider, someone who challenges the party system, Humala would have difficulty governing in accordance with democratic rules. In this sense, there are notable similarities between Humala and Chávez. Both started their careers with unsuccessful acts of military rebellion before running for office. Like Chávez, Humala has proposes a constitutional assembly to rewrite the nation’s constitution. In the process, he would almost certainly attempt to centralise executive power.
Evo Morales has also called elections for a constituent assembly in Bolivia, but the similarities between Morales, Chávez, and Humala should not be overstated. Like the Jacques-Louis David paintings of Napoleon crossing the Alps, Chávez, and Humala resemble Bonaparte-like leaders mounted on relatively feeble movements and parties; Evo Morales has risen to power with the backing of combative and well-organised social movements.
For two decades these movements have struggled for water, land and control over resources; in the process, a militant indigenous consciousness has been awakened.
The constitutional underpinnings of democracy are always at risk when a powerful leader proposes radical changes in a country with deep inequalities, especially when political parties are in an advanced state of decay. Even Morales’s detractors agree, however, that his electoral victory represents, for now, a deepening of democracy.
In contrast with Morales, Humala’s leadership reflects popular disorganisation. Confronted by Morales’s bold nationalisation of the oil and gas industry in Bolivia, Humala failed to define what, concretely, nationalisation of natural resources would mean should he win office in Peru. He calls for reparations for victims of human rights crimes but refuses to address allegations that he committed human rights abuses while serving as commander of a military base during the counter-insurgency war in the early 1990s. His electoral strategy oscillates between appeals to a disenfranchised rural supporters and assurances of moderation for urban professionals. A leader of a real movement–or an organised party–would be compelled to define a position on these issues more clearly.
A victory for APRA would signal a return to populism. APRA’s populism is not the strident subspecies that Castañeda deplores; nor is it anything like the Chilean-style social democracy he admires. García presided over one of the most corrupt and inept governments in Peruvian history, but he has won over many of the voters who cast their ballots behind more conservative candidates in the first round of the election. The business community and urban professionals back García as a bulwark against Humala – and the influence of Chávez.
Peru, like the rest of the region, no longer shows the enthusiasm it once did for the market-friendly economic recipes of the so-called Washington consensus. It is hard to generalise beyond that observation, except to say that a multiplicity of movements and parties is emerging in search of alternatives to the existing order. The idea of a “right” left and a “wrong” left, so redolent of the rhetoric of axes of good and evil, obscures more than it illuminates.
Vladimiro Montesinos Latest Move: Chess Pawn
Source: AgenciaPeru.com, 29 de mayo del 2006
La guerra asimetrica cubano-venezolana y sus implicancias en las elecciones peruanas: Peon de ajedrez Download file
Read also: ¡Vladimiro al Premio Alfaguara!
Vladiconspiraciones: los planes A y B de Humala
Chronological local coverage below
UPP Dennounces Pact Between APRA and Fujimorismo
This weekend UPP made public an audio with a conversation between Luis Gonzales Posada (APRA) and Jose Lopez Meneses. Yesterday night in a press conference, UPP released e-mail correpondence from Daniel Borobio detailing that would provide evidence of arrangements Keiko Fujimori and Alan Garcia at the beginning of May.
JNE y las restricciones a encuestadoras
Enrique Bernales sobre la libertad provisional de Alberto Fujimori
Measures to Ensure Citizens Safety on Election Day
Close to 53,000 elements of the armed forces and police will supervise the electoral process on Sunday. The National Defense Council, called by President Alejandro Toledo yesterday, is investigating the possibility that a “paid revolt” could take place on election day, and allegations that foreigners have entered the country to provoke political unrest.
Sobre la Injerencia del Presidente Chavez: MOE de la OEA recuerda normas de la Carta Democratica
Previous postings: Chavez Attacks Garcia & Toledo. This time from Bolivia
Analysis of APOYO Poll: 1 in 5 Peruvians would not Vote for Garcia or Humala
La Republica interviewed political analysts to discuss the results of the latest APOYO poll in which 13 % of Peruvians are voting blank or void and 7% have not decided their vote yet.
Previous posting: APOYO Vote Simulation: Hidden Vote for Humala. Blank Vote could be Decisive
Letter Armando Villanueva to Ollanta Humala
Joseph Stiglitz Supports Bolivia Energy Policy
Interview with Luis Giampietri
Chavez Attacks Garcia & Toledo. This time from Bolivia
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez criticized Alan Garcia and President Alejandro Toledo in his radio show on Sunday. Chavez threatened to break Venezuela’s diplomatic relations with Peru should Garcia be elected, called Toledo a traitor, and asked Peruvians to vote for Ollanta Humala. Today, Toledo called upon the OAS to respond to Chavez interference with the Peruvian electoral process after a meeting with OAS Electoral Observation Mission chief Lloyd Axworthy. Ollanta Humala kept his distance from Chavez’ comments by arguing they will have no impact on the electoral process.
Previous postings:
Nadine Heredia marca distancias con Hugo Chávez
Statement by OAS Mission Chief Follows International Law
Interview with Fabián Novak
Chief of OAS Electoral Mission Met with Ministers of Defense and Interior
APOYO Vote Simulation: Hidden Vote for Humala. Blank Vote could be Decisive
APOYO Opinion y Mercados conducted a vote simulation and a poll. These are the results taking into account total vote:
ONPE: Segunda vuelta está garantizada
Magdalena Chú, jefa de la Oficina Nacional de Procesos Electorales (ONPE), descartó un fraude el 4 de junio y resaltó que los comicios serán supervisados por el JNE, la Defensoría y observadores internacionales. Tambien comentó que el conteo de votos de los peruanos que sufragan en el exterior se realizará de forma más rápida que en la primera vuelta.
The Media & its Role in the Elections
ONPE at 98.299%: The New Congress
Source: El Comercio, 29 de mayo del 2006
Read also our May 26th’s Congressional update, May 25, 2006 graciously provided by Rici.
Debate de los equipos técnicos de UPP y APRA
June 4th: A Choice between Democracy & Authoritarianism?
Santiago Pedraglio and Luis Pasara discuss the democratic credentials of Ollanta Humala and Alan Garcia. It is not clear Garcia and Humala would pass the democratic test with high marks.
Interview with Carlos Tapia
Interview with Marciano Rengifo
UPP presenta audio con presunta conversacion entre Luis Gonzales Posada (APRA) y Oscar Lopez Meneses
Interview with Mauricio Mulder
Lourdes Flores: Electores de UN libres de decidir su voto el 4 de junio
APOYO National Poll, May 24-26, 2006
Source: El Comercio, 28 de mayo del 2006
Source: El Comercio, 28 de mayo del 2006
Source: El Comercio, 28 de mayo del 2006
Universe: 2,000 interviews in 175 districts in 113 localities in 77 provinces of all departments representing 81% of the electorate. Margin of error: +/-2.2%
IDICE National Simulation of the Vote, May 23-26, 2006: Garcia Clear Winner
Survey conducted by IDICE Del Peru
Universe: 4,850 personas interviewed between May 23-26, 2006 in 140 districts in 37 provinces in 21 regions, representing 70% of the national electorate. Margin of error: 4.5%
Summary of results: Download file
Simmulation of the Vote: Download file
CPI National Poll, May 24-25, 2006
Source: La Republica, 28 de mayo del 2006
Sample: 1,710 interviews in 133 districts in 47 provinces in 17 departments. Download file
Charts: Download file
Interview with Carlos Ivan Degregori
APOYO National Poll: Public Perceptions of A. Fujimori
Source: El Comercio, 28 de mayo del 2006
Interview with Nelson Manrique
U. de Lima National Poll May 19-21: García 61.2%, Humala 38.8%
Source: La Republica, 27 de mayo del 2006
Según el nuevo sondeo a nivel nacional del Grupo de Opinión Pública (GOP) de la Universidad de Lima, realizado entre el 19 al 21 del presente mes (en el cual no tuvo influencia el debate electoral), Alan García tiene el 61.2% de los votos válidos, mientras que Ollanta Humala sólo el 38.8%. El candidato aprista cada vez toma mayor distancia.
Encuesta nacional realizada por el Grupo de Opinión Pública (GOP) de la Universidad de Lima a 2,410 ciudadanos en zonas urbanas y rurales de 248 distritos ubicados en 83 provincias de las 25 regiones del Perú. El trabajo de campo se realizó entre el viernes 19 y el domingo 21 de mayo. Nivel de Confianza: 95%. Margen de Error: +/-2.04% Download file
Interview with Diego Garcia Sayan
CONECTA National Poll: Garcia in First Place
IMA Lima& Callao Poll, May 22-24, 2006: Alan Garcia Winner of Presidential Debate
Debate de equipos técnicos suspendido por violencia
El esperado debate entre los equipos técnicos de Alan García (APRA) y Ollanta Humala (UPP) se suspendió hoy como consecuencia de los actos de violencia protagonizados ayer en Cuzco.