Peru’s largest business group called on the country’s political parties to refrain from excessive political fighting next year in order to support investments in the Andean country.
Over the pastyear, business confidence in Peru declined in part due to what many analysts called excessive political fighting between President Ollanta Humala’s government and political opponents.
The decline in business confidence, which was also certainly due to international factors, was one of the reasons that economic growth cooled this year.
“With less political noise there is more stability and concentration on economic growth in Peru,” the head of business group Confiep, Alfonso Garcia Miro, said in comments to state news agency Andina. “We wouldn’t have to dedicate other efforts and resources to resolve problems rather than concentrating on the country’s development agenda.”
Political fighting, which has dominated the headlines throughout the year, took off again this week following a year-end television interview by President Humala.
In the interview, Humala criticized the El Comercio media conglomerate for its acquisition of a local competitor. The acquisition boosts El Comercio’s share in the newspaper market from around 59% to over 78%, and has raised concerns that it would affect freedom of expression by squeezing out other opinions from the market.
Political opponents of Humala, including ex-President Alan Garcia, former President Alberto Fujimori from his prison compound, and ex-presidential candidate Keiko Fujimori accused the president of threatening press freedom.
In Egypt, we used to say “Caravan proceed, while children play”. Peru is a Healthy country. Sincere wishes to Peru and Peruvian citizens.
If one company gets to control 78% of the newspaper market, then there isn’t much freedom of the press left. You can quickly figure out which politicians and political parties will benefit from a shadowy group controlling the news cycle in Peru. No company or individual should be allowed to own more than 20% of any news source, this would also included cross ownership of radio and TV stations. Lots of competition in providing news to the general population helps keep the political class a little more honest. Democracy is a very fragile type of government, without a vibrant free press, then it can’t exist for long.
In the United States freedom of the press no longer exists. A few large corporations own almost all of the main stream media. The only good sources of news is from internet blogs from around the world. It seems to be a global trend to tightly control what the general population think and feel.
The Garcia and Fujimori clans are a parasitic curse on Peru. Peru doesn’t have a monopoly on this problem.