Hard Lump In My Throat

The International Special election debate Election 2011 Peruvian presidential elections

International Special Peruvian Election

By Isaac Bigio,

items from various Latin American newspapers.

April 5, 2011

On Sunday April 10 is the general election in Peru. In this country there have been many different positions on the candidates and what we do in this column is a comparative analysis of these in relation to other elections in its international environment.

One of the oddities that has the Peruvian process is that one week of that vote can be predicted only thing is that there will be a second round although you can not predict who can get to them.

For the first time in Peruvian history (and possibly South America) there are 5 candidates who have alternated at the top of several polls.

Keiko Fujimori ('s daughter who ruled Peru in 1990-2000), Luis Castillo (who in 2010 resigned as mayor of Lima who held since 2003 to run for president) and Alejandro Toledo (former President 2001-2006) came to lead a number of surveys, although some have lost past preferences to Ollanta Humala (nationalist former military officer who rose against Fujimori) and Pedro Pablo Kuczynski (former prime minister of Toledo).

In the last presidential elections that have had all their other neighbors could know in advance who was for winning or about to enter the ballot. The current presidents of Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Bolivia, Chile, Argentina, Paraguay, Uruguay and Brazil were leading the polls at least one week before their election.

Peru, by contrast, is open to multiple possibilities. A candidate who arrives raspadamente second, but only has one fifth of the votes, could become president if they were able to unite many of his former rivals to slow to a supposed 'greater evil'.

is a scenario similar to that produced in 2006 the appointment of current President Alan García. He, at the last moment, came to take the second place (and for very little) to the Social Christian Lourdes Flores and then on the final lap he managed to win the support of all those who wanted to avoid the winner of the first round (Humala) could successful warning of the danger that he might be a new Chavez. Garcia, in turn, showed a major policy change since in his first term (1985-90) was a precursor of nationalizations and anti-imperialist sermons after the Bolivarian inherit.

To avoid that scenario Humala ha decidido ‘moderarse’ distanciándose del polo del ALBA para acercarse al del actual gobernante Partido de los Trabajadores del Brasil. Asesores del PT fueron claves en ‘moderar’ al farabundismo salvadoreño y hacerles llegar a la presidencia. Si bien El Salvador y Nicaragua tienen hoy a la ex guerrilla en el poder, la diferencia entre ambos es grande. Mientras Funes recibe a Obama y reconoce al gobierno hondureño, Ortega apoya a Gadafi y veta a Lobos.

Al entrar en la órbita del PT Humala busca evitar tantas animadversiones y sacar provecho de la alta popularidad interna e internacional que tiene Lula, quien, a diferencia de Chávez, es apoyado por una amplia gama de inversionistas and foreign nationals who see him as a model of social reconciliation.