Archive for the ‘Political Parties’ Category
El Concepto de Nacionalismo y su relación con los candidatos
Mirko Lauer analiza a Alan García y Ollanta Humala
Felipe Osterling: Unidad Nacional “ya no tiene sentido ni razón de ser”
Candidatos inician campaña electoral en el sur del país
Carlos Reyna y Fernando Tuesta evalúan las posibilidades de triunfo de Alan García
Observa: El Nuevo Mapa Electoral del Perú
Source: Observa, 28 de abril del 2006
Observa, Observatorio de la Vigilancia Social, es una iniciativa de un grupo de organizaciones que buscan articular, difundir y promover las experiencias de vigilancia social y una cultura de transparencia en la gestión pública.
Marketers vs. Politicians in Unidad Nacional
Maxwell A. Cameron
April 28, 2006
Last night I ran into an old acquaintance in the Café Haiti. He told me he has been working on the campaign for Lourdes Flores, and I asked him for his assessment. “The campaign,” he said. The problem lay in a campaign in which Lourdes Flores was depicted as a candidate of the rich. But he also had another more surprising observation: Flores, he said, was marketed like a product. She was surrounded by election marketers and technocrats; the brain-trust of PPC political operators was shunted aside. Politically experienced people like Antero Flores-Araoz were marginalized. “You don’t sell champagne in Abancay,” said my acquaintance. “You can have a great champagne and great publicity, but if people want to drink something else it is useless to sell them champagne.”
This is an interpretation that seems to be gaining ground. The other day, Arturo Woodman noted errors of political judgment, including underestimation of Alan Garcia (something my friend confirmed). Today there is an interesting interview with Felipe Osterling, an old PPC stalwart, who says: “this campaign was carried out basically by technocrats and not by politicians.” Of course, there is a reason why people like Osterling and Flores-Araoz, not to mention Rafael Rey Rey and Jose Barba Caballero, were pushed aside—they are not leaders who have Flores’ broad popular appeal. But an appealing candidate is not enough—solid political judgment and experience is also required to win an election.
Read also: La olla de Dionisio
JNE rechaza apelaciones de Unidad Nacional
Updated – APRA’s “sólido norte” vs Ollanta Humala
On April 25, Ollanta Humala paid tribute to Victor Raul Haya de la Torre, founder of APRA, by visting his tomb during the second day of his tour to La Libertad. APRA followers responded angrily to the tribute and destroyed the floral arrangement. Humala also faced a hostile crowd the day before.
Today, local media covered the reactions of Humala and Alan Garcia to the incidents in La Libertad. Humala claims to be a victim of intolerance from supporters of APRA (also known as bufalos), while Garcia argues that Humala shows a double face by moving away from victimizer to become a victim to gain support. The hotililty in La Libertad is analyzed in an interview with Jorge Bruce. Bruce argues the fact that Nadine Heredia, wife and partner of Humala, did not go to the cementary with Humala was a sign the candidate anticipated a reaction there.
Source: La República, 26 de abril del 2006
Read also: Peru Election: First Punches
Updated – Arturo Woodman: Negative Campaigning and Internal Divisions Hurt Flores
Arturo Woodman, Lourdes Flores’ controversial vice-presidential running mate, argues that negative attacks on Flores hurt her in the first round election. He also reveals that there was controversy within the Unidad Nacional alliance over how seriously to take the threat of Alan Garcia. One advisor (possibly Guillermo Paredes) told Flores not to worry about Garcia, while Glorisa Ramírez had a different view.
Update: Arturo Woodman was interviewed by Rosa Maria Palacios in Prensa Libre on Wednesday night. During this interview Woodman talked about the campaign. Below we reproduced the views of a fellow blogger on this interview.
Ya lo máximo ya
Ya tengo el poder, 26 de abril 26 del 2006
– Rosa María Palacios: “Lo que pasa, señor Woodman, es que en el Perú la riqueza está muy mal vista. A diferencia de otras sociedades como Europa o Estados Unidos, en el Perú hacer dinero se ve mal, por eso usted tal vez no debió aceptar la invitación de Lourdes Flores”.
– Arturo Woodman: “Efectivamente, en este país no hay una cultura del éxito”.
—-Prensa libre, miércoles 27 de abril del 2006.
Esta gente ya es demasiado. Me parece insólito como pueden ser tan tercos y tan poco autocríticos. Ahora resulta que Lourdes Flores no está en la segunda vuelta porque la gente en verdad es “resentida”, desprecia la riqueza, le gusta ser pobre y quiere que todos sean pobres. Cuando, según esta lógica, en verdad en el Perú, el que quiere, puede hacer plata. Así de fácil.
Este tipo de razonamientos se hacen parte del sentido común, conozco gente que piensa así. Como si fuera un floro que el país es desigual e injusto; como si no hubiera exclusión y racismo, como si las leyes fueran iguales para todos, como si la educación y el acceso a la salud fueran iguales para todos. Como si no supiéramos todos que a la gente con plata lo único que le interesa es tener más plata ellos y por eso la mayoría no les da su voto.
Si en el Perú hay desconfianza hacia la riqueza, es porque esta es estructuralmente ilegítima, y ese es el problema que hay que atacar, o por lo menos, admitir. Los resultados de la primera vuelta no le han enseñado nada a nadie: “Lourdes ha perdido porque la gente es bruta, por culpa de los cholos resentidos”. Asu. El panorama, en verdad, es cada día más desolador.
Electoral Violence: 15 Cases Reported
La Republica reported today 15 cases of hostility against presidential candidates and media reporters during the electoral campaign. Lourdes Flores was target of seven of this attacks.
Unidad Nacional Fighting to the End for Each Vote
Martha Chávez Complains about Alianza por el Futuro
Whereas two members of the Fujimori clan–the daughter (Keiko) and brother (Santiago) of the former president–won seats in congress, Martha Chavez, the presidential candidate, was frozen out of the second round. Chavez shows signs of regret over the contrast between the success of the congressional slate and the disappointment of her own presidential aspirations.
Updated 2: Carlos Tapia and the Peruvian Left
April 26th: We have added a La República interview with Salomón Lerner Febres published today.
Read also:
Hasta los grandes se equivocan
Interview with La Ventana indiscreta: Carlos Tapia declara su apoyo a Ollanta Humala
La izquierda boluda
Recordar es volver a vivir
Prisionero de sus contradicciones
April 20th: Local newspapers have picked up some reactions fron leaders of the Peruvian Left to Carlos Tapia’s change of tune
APRA analyzes second round strategies
The brains behind the APRA campaign are meeting to talk about second round strategies. Apparently the idea of a “social front” will figure prominently.
Financial Times on the Second Round
Presidential rivals do battle over Peru’s history
By Hal Weitzman in Trujillo, Peru
Financial Times on line, published: April 26 2006 00:12
For Weitzman, “the Humala-García contest pits two of Peru’s most powerful political institutions against each other: Apra, its oldest and most formidable party; and the military, which has governed the country for much of its recent past. The two have clashed many times but never has the confrontation been channelled so starkly through the electoral process.”
You will need a subscription with FT.com to read the whole article.
Updated – Mario Vargas Llosa’s Reasons for an Alliance
In this essay, Mario Vargas Llosa makes the case for an alliance between APRA and Unidad Nacional. Two things are extraordinary about this argument. First, Vargas Llosa was a bitter adversary of APRA in the 1980s. Second, as Mirko Lauer noted on Rueda de Prensa last Sunday, the formation of an alliance between the much-maligned “traditional political parties” (Popular Action and the Popular Christian Party) and his own movement, Libertad, contributed to the electoral defeat of Vargas Llosa in 1990. Lauer expanded his argument in his La Republica column today.
Most of the commentary generated by Vargas Llosa’s op-ed has been negative. We have reproduced the views of local analysts, published in the last two days, below.
Read also: Los sueños húmedos de Varguitas; Alianza electoral? Para que?
Interview with John Crabtree
Read also: John Crabtree analiza a Ollanta Humala; Peruvians Prepare to Bite Back and Peru’s chessboard
Resurrecting APRA’s Social Front
APRA proposed a social front without success in June 2004. The proposal has been resurrected as a potential campaign strategy for the second round.
Previous postings on the subject:
En el Apra crece consenso por candidatura única para próximas elecciones
Le llueven críticas al Frente Social por su composición
No hay puntos en comun entre el APRA y AP
Alan García equivocó estrategia electoral
Jose Matos Mar: Votación Provinciana Decidió Resultado de Primera Vuelta
Seats in Congress: The latest projections
Once again, our thanks to Rici for the latest seat projections for congress:
Download file
Note that there are two pages: the first page shows how close each party is to passing the bar (cifra repartidora) necessary to get a seat. Page two offers the actual seat numbers.
“The change is that UPP has been creeping ahead in Apurimac, and is now showing as winning both seats instead of splitting with Apra. I think I missed that possibility in my last notes. We still don’t know whether RN will make the threshold; the projection is still showing it with 4.02%, so I’m still including it.” — Rici
For Rici’s earlier (April 20) projections click here.
Hostility against Ollanta Humala
The UPP-PNP Alliance
How long will the alliance behind Ollanta Humala last if he is not elected president? Not long, according to the secretary general of the APRA, Mauricio Mulder. Of course Mulder is trying in a not-so-subtle way to make a point here: APRA is the only organized and disciplined party in Peru.
Post Mortem for Unidad Nacional
Ántero Flores-Aráoz, Arturo Woodman, and Marco Parra offer their evaluations of the Unidad Nacional campaign.
See also: Un fracaso mas si importa. Razones de la derrota de la derecha peruana
La República analiza fortalezas y debilidades de Humala y García
Source: La República, 24 de abril del 2006
Updated – Reflections on the Defeat of the Peruvian Left
John Crabtree analiza a Ollanta Humala
Estrategias APRA-UN de segunda vuelta
Source: La República, 23 de abril del 2006
Candidates Who Fell Short
Source: El Comercio, 23 de abril del 2006
The Venezuelan Connection
There is plenty of speculation about Chavez supporting the Ollanta Humala campaign, but precious little hard evidence to back it up. Correo seems to think that Isaac Galsky might be part of the connection, but it provides no evidence. Correo, it would be fair to say, is rabidly anti-Humala. How else to describe a paper that routinely calls the candidate “the fascist”—not in its editorials only, but in its news reporting as well?
Peru’s New Cleavage: North versus South
Maxwell A. Cameron
April 21, 2006
In an interview with La Republica, Pedro Francke offered a number of interesting observations with regard to the sources of Ollanta Humala’s support. The first question he was asked was: if Humala’s support comes from the poor, who represent 52 percent of the total population of Peru, why did Humala win only about 30 percent of the vote? To this, Francke replied that “I don’t believe there is a direct correlation between poverty and the vote for Ollanta Humala.” Humala, said Francke, has strong support in some poor regions, like Puno, Cusco, and Huancavelica, but not in others like the jungle and Cajamarca.
I thought this was an intriguing observation, so I went to the Instituto Nacional de Estadistica e Informacion (http://www.inei.gob.pe/) to look at poverty numbers. One of the tables provides statistics on poverty by region in 2001 and 2004. The first thing that even a casual glance suggests is that it is simply not true to say there has been no trickle-down from economic growth in the past few years. There has been poverty reduction, but it is uneven.
Overall, poverty has declined in Peru from about 54.3 to 51.6 percent between 2001-04. In some areas, like Lima, poverty has actually increased. Poverty has declined significantly along the coast of Peru, such as in Ica (where it has declined from 46.7 to 29.2) and in Tumbes (where it has declined from 44.4 to 21.6), but it has also declined in some of the highland areas like Cusco (from 72.7 to 59.2) and in the jungle departments of Ucayali (70.8 to 55.8) and Madre de Dios (48.7 to 20.4).
When we look at the distribution of poverty in Peru, it matches the vote for Humala only imperfectly. Download file. Thus, for example, Humala has done best in the poorest departments like Huancavelica, Puno and Ayacucho, but he has also done well in Arequipa, Tacna, and Madre de Dios. On the other hand, he has not done so well in certain poor departments like Cajamarca or Pasco. There is a rough correlation between poverty and the vote for Humala, but it weaker than one might expect. Nor is there an obvious relationship between changes in poverty and the vote for Humala. Humala has done well in places where poverty has declined (like Tacna and Madre de Dios) as well as in places here it has remained unchanged (Huancavelica and Huanuco).
Pedro Francke’s conclusion is that there is more to the vote for Humala than poverty. “Poverty is combined with marginalization but also with an element of ethnic identification. It is striking how similar the results are with those obtained by Alejandro Toledo in 2001.” This is indeed true. Toledo did best in places like Cusco and Puno, but he also did well in places like Loreto and Ancash where Humala has not done so well. Toledo did better in Lima, Cajamarca, and Lambayeque; Humala has done better in Ayacucho, Huancavelica, and Apurimac.
Violence is another factor that probably plays a role. Humala does well wherever there was major conflict (Ayacucho, Huanuco, Junin) , but he also does well in places where there was no conflict (Moquegua and Tacna).
So what is driving the vote for Humala? I’d have to say that the most interesting exercise in looking at these numbers is simply ranking departments according to support for Humala. What comes up? Basically, Peru is divided north/south. Draw a line from Lima east to Madre de Dios. Take everything below except Ica, and exclude everything above except Huanuco and Junin, and you have over 50 percent support for Humala in what is left over. Take the north of Peru, add Ica and subtract Huanuco and Junin, and Humala’s support falls to 28 percent. The lesson for the second round is clear: a fight between Garcia and Humala is likely to become a fight between north and south.
Partidos que no superaron la valla participarán en elecciones regionales y municipales
Ramón Pérez Almodóvar, nuevo asesor de Ollanta Humala
The Latest Numbers: Presidential Vote and Legislative Seat Projections
Here are some of the latest numbers, and some pretty pictures, courtesy of Rici.
The graph shows the presidential vote count as of this morning, split between the foreign vote, the Lima vote (Lima province, not the department), and the rest of Perú. The percentages do not correspond to ONPE; they are based on the percentage of voters computed, not the percentage of voting booths.
For those of you who want to see the latest seat count, including the calculation based on the “cifra repartidora”: Download file. The explanation is provided below (see “continue reading.”)
Fernando Rospigliosi sobre el fracaso de la izquierda
The Nation (US) on Ollanta Humala
Juan Carlos Tafur sobre la ingobernabilidad en el Congreso
Santiago Fujimori: “Ollanta Humala no es el enemigo”
Fujimori’s supporters in Congress will pursue one over-riding objective: to secure the return of their leader. To that end, it remains to be seen what sorts of alliances the AF group might form. One possibility, which is not discarded by member of congress-elect Santiago Fujimori, is an alliance with Humala. Such an alliance would, however, face opposition within both groups.
Ollanta Humala and the Media
Ollanta Humala met with the Consejo de la Prensa Peruana to complain about press bias and affirm his commitment to a free press.
Perú Posible y la Valla Electoral
Luis Castaneda se va de Unidad Nacional
Congresista Gerardo Saavedra defiende proyecto de ley que lo favorece económicamente
Mirko Lauer on likelihood that García will make the second round
Lauer suggests that with 92 percent of the votes counted, including 60 percent of the vote abroad, and a 70,000 vote gap between Garcia and Flores, is seems unlikely that Flores will make it into the second round. Moreover, many of the disputed returns are from peripheral areas of Lima, where Humala is likely to benefit rather than Flores.
Congressional Seat Count
Here is the latest seat count, courtesy of Rici: Download file
Thanks, Rici!
Augusto Álvarez Rodrich on Fujimoristas in Congress
Fujimori’s congressional bench will use its newfound voice in the legislature to demand the return of their leader as a condition for support providing a majority to the next government. Augusto Álvarez Rodrich warns that contenders in the second round may be tempted to make a deal.
¿Quién es Humberto Lay?
Analistas sobre las posibilidades de Humala en el debate de segunda vuelta
Mirko Lauer on the Second Round
According to Mirko Lauer, in the event that the runoff is between Ollanta Humala and Alan Garcia, Humala will move to the center, even as Garcia attempts to go after Humala’s core supporters. Humala may calculate that his core support is strong, but he needs to pick up moderate voters; Garcia will adopt a populist strategy, trusting that more conservative voters have nowhere else to go. The effect could be an interesting crossfire.
Carlos Tapia on Ollanta Humala
The allegations that Ollanta Humala was responsible for human rights crimes places the left in an awkward position as they struggle with who to choose between candidates in the second round. Humala has a platform that resonates with the left, but he has not provided an account of his actions while commander of the military base in Madre Mia and the allegations against him are credible.
In this interview with La Republica, Carlos Tapia, former member of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, outlines the reasons for the rise of Ollanta Humala and his ability to capture voters that in the past have supported the left. The interviewer asks Tapia about how, as a former member of the CVR, he can support a candidate accused of human rights crimes. He answers that he supports Humala’s “great transformation” but that the human rights allegations should be investigated. The interview ends on an angry note as Tapia rejects the idea that because he votes for Humala he is a violator of human rights and a “Fuji-Montesinista.”
Tapia appears to have changed his tune since earlier this year when he criticized Humala for his authoritarianism: Ollanta y el ‘neovelasquismo’ electoral; Elecciones: Ollanta y las izquierdas; Carlos Tapia on Ollanta Humala’s Undemocratic Values; Ollanta: ¿policía municipal?
Dangerous Liaisons IV: Ollanta Humala’s Relations with the Montesinos Mafia
Source: La República, 19 de abril del 2006