Cusco community defenders: planting hope to root out violence

By Annie Thériault—

Where is the justice? In Peru, a nation still struggling to recover from a sordid 20-year cycle of terror, political uncertainty and corruption, this simple yet poignant question has become an almost daily litany. And for victims of intra-familiar or domestic violence – or every third woman in Peru – it has become a cry of despair. There are countless numbers who continue to be failed by a legal system plagued by inefficiency and delay, and permeated by machismo and discrimination. Read more…

Indigenous communities sign up for forest conservation program

Sixty four indigenous and rural communities in Peru have signed up to be part of a new government initiative aimed at conserving forests, state news agency Andina reported.

The initiative is led by the Environment Ministry and involves paying communities 10 soles (about $3.62) a year for every hectare of forest that is incorporated into the conservation program. 

The program will initially focus on the Apurimac and Ene river valleys (VRAE), where illegal coca cultivation has caused serious deforestation, and areas such as Satipo in Junin and the La Convencion valley in Cusco, also coca growing areas. The program will later expand nationwide. In the first year, the program, known as Juntos Amazonico, is expected to exceed the target of incorporating 300,000 hectares of forest. Read more…

Humala in Brazil calls on greater border cooperation to improve security

President-elect Ollanta Humala called on greater cooperation with Brazil to improve security along Peru’s eastern-jungle border region, daily El Comercio reported.

“We have to fight against drug trafficking and against security risks,” Humala said. This is a “common problem” of Peru and Brazil, he added.

Humala made the comments following a meeting on Thursday with Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff in that country’s capital, Brasilia. The stop over in Brazil is part of Humala’s tour throughout South America to meet with authorities.

Rousseff advisor on international affairs, Marco Aurelio, said that the Brazilian president proposed greater police and military presence on that country’s borders to provide better cooperation on combating drug, arms and human smuggling.

During the campaign, Humala looked to Brazil as a model that could maintain the country’s economic growth while being more socially inclusive. Humala’s more moderate discourse was key to attracting centrists that were skeptical of his opponent, 36-year-old Congresswoman Keiko Fujimori.

In Brasilia, Humala said “Brazil is a successful model that has achieved growth with macro economic stability and social inclusion.” However, he said that Peru would need to find its own path for inclusion and economic growth.

“The Peruvian reality is distinct from the Brazilian reality,” he said.

Humala will meet with Rousseff’s predecessor, Luiz Inácio “Lula” da Silva, on Friday before continuing his tour to Paraguay, Uruguay, Argentina and Chile.

Humala will assume office on July 28.

Fujimori concedes defeat, salutes Humala on victory

Congresswoman Keiko Fujimori has conceded defeat in Peru’s presidential election to left-wing nationalist Ollanta Humala, daily El Comercio reported.

“I recognize the triumph of Ollanta Humala, I salute his victory and I wish him luck,” said Fujimori, who added that now is the time to “mend bridges and start dialogue.”

On Monday, official results from election authority ONPE, with 91.64% of the ballots counted, showed Humala ahead of Fujimori with 51.48% support versus 48.52% support, respectively.

Humala, 48, is a former army officer that was narrowly defeated in the 2006 election to outgoing President Alan Garcia. During that campaign, Humala had strong ties with Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and supported the latter’s socialist policies.

In this campaign, Humala’s success was partially due to a more moderate discourse that attracted advisers from centrist parties that split support in the first round vote.

His success was also due to mistrust among many voters about Fujimori and her Fuerza 2011 party.

Fujimori, a 36-year-old with and MBA from Columbia University, is the daughter of jailed ex-President Alberto Fujimori.

While Alberto Fujimori is credited with setting the framework for Peru’s economic success and defeating the bloody Shining Path insurgency, much of the electorate also remembers him for gross human rights violations and corruption during his 10 year administration (1990-2000). He is currently serving a 25-year-prison sentence.

Critics of Fujimori pointed to her political team to suggest that she would implement similar authoritarian policies as her father.

Nevertheless, Fujimori had the backing of the business community that saw her as more likely to maintain economic stability, while Humala is expected to increase the government’s role in the economy and increase taxes.

As a result, news of the election results sent Lima stock exchange BVL plunging on Monday morning in one of the biggest decreases in its history, state news agency Andina reported.

The BVL’s General Index fell 12.51 percent to 18,571 points, while the Selective Index declined 12.41 percent to 25,700 points.

The activity resulted in the bourse suspending trading in the morning and halting it early in the afternoon.

Former Prime Minister and ex-presidential candidate Pedro Pablo Kuczynski urged Humala to name key posts in his government quickly to reassure investors.

“Humala must name a minister of economy as soon as possible,” Kuczynski said.

Humala will also have to appoint the head of the Central Bank. The president of business association Confiep, Humberto Speziani, said the reappointment of Julio Velarde as the Bank’s president would send a good message to investors.

“If they stay with Julio Velard, that would be a good message to the economic actors,” Speziani said.

Ollanta Humala Projected Winner Peru Presidential Election / Updated

8:17 p.m. A sample of early returns calculated by pollster Ipsos Apoyo, with 100% of ballots returned:

51.4% Ollanta Humala / 48.6% Keiko Fujimori

Read more…

What should Peru do?

This article by Paul Goulder looks at the 2011 Peru presidential election from the point of view of economics and history, and first from the economic experience of Peru from 1960 to 2007.   —

Peru has spent forty-five of the last fifty years bumping along the bottom of a GNP (gross national product) chart:

Only in recent years has there been something like lift-off. This article argues that Peru has a once-in-a-decade[1] chance of catching up with not only the other two economies on the Chart in section 1 (Chile and Korea) but even the “really high income” countries in the subsequent table (e.g. Norway). It can do this by investing selectively but massively in education and in high-end investment-good demand.

At the close of the opinion polling this week it seemed that there was a slight movement towards Humala and his now companion-in-arms, ex-President Toledo. This is good news for those who want Peru to rub shoulders with the really high income countries through the high-trust development route outlined in this article, as Toledo particularly has the required experience and knowledge to follow this through and a belief in the free society necessary for the nurture of creative enterprise and a can-do attitude[2] to new projects.

The electoral process so far[3] has been characterized by indications of negative voting, which is a tendency of a second round system. In a sense, a state of “electoral fear” hangs over Peru: fear of the supposed intentions of the other candidate and an ultimate flickering fear of a descent into chaos, of renewed terrorism, corruption, state killings and of Mexican levels of drug-related assassinations.

In spite of recent gains, the economy is way behind others  (see Jaws I and II below) with which it was level-pegging until the early seventies.  But the recent miracle growth rates permit thoughts of playing catch-up with the really high-income nations – and why not? We suggest that the magic something that has gone right for Peru - the “something” that we recognize as successful and which the electorate wants to keep – has not been well identified by the political process. It has been over-simplified by political campaigners but the devil is in the detail and neither campaign likes specifics overmuch.

1.JAWS I and II - THE INCOME AND DEVELOPMENT GAP

 The Peruvian economic story from 1960 until the more recent  boom (in Peru) and crisis (US and Europe).

Since 2006/7 the situation has improved as Peru has notched up an average 7 to 8 percent growth rate in real terms: 3,276 to 4,469 (but compared to 68,360 to 84,640 for Norway) current dollars per person for years 2006-9. There is still a very long way to go.

2. VISIONS – TURNING A TEMPORARY BOOM INTO A PERMANENT FEATURE

The second round electoral system – as we have seen over the last few weeks – tends to encourage an intense period of character assassinations. The winner in the opinion polls will simply be the candidate who commands the support of the most newspaper and TV channels, or the media in general. As most of these are in commercial hands, their support will tend to go to a pro-business candidate – unless they can be otherwise “bought.” So the “fear of the other candidate’s intentions” has driven the election debate into a “she is a greater threat to democracy” and “he is a greater threat to the economy” corner. 

This is a pity because the economic gains of the last few years provide the necessary – but not sufficient – conditions for the emergence of a visionary leader who can turn a temporary boom into a permanent feature.  The debate should have generated an intense critique of each candidate’s vision for Peru. This in turn will have a “societal effect” as Peru converts into a country with a national mission that is more than a slogan: “building a high trust society,” “conserving the environment,” “water for all,” “defeating rascism.” Referring to Peru´s first major boom – that of guano (1840 to 1879) – the country’s great mid-twentieth century historian, Jorge Basadre, warned of what he called the “prosperidad falaz.” We have been warned.

3. FANTASIA WITHOUT MUSIC – PERU IN 2025
Imagine the following (more surrealism than fiction) written, say, fourteen years into the future.

“During the last few years The Peruvian Model (the PM) has become known world-wide as a beacon of hope for the globe. The PM has earned its international acclaim in (a) its model education system – turned round in a decade or so – with 87 percent of all schools raised to the level of the ten best in the country, (b) a final rejection of racism – and inter-racial strife – with a whole raft of policies delivering equal opportunities to all Peruvians, (c) an ecologically balanced economy based on land property rights and stakeholder shares in resource-concession companies paralleled by a land-value tax,  (d) a business driven social model where corporations are given the right incentives to promote responsible community projects and (e) the use of mobile (replacement) executive boards to be parachuted into inefficient or unworthy companies. And it has worked. A series of world-wide ecological disasters following the Japanese Tsunami of 2011 had brought the world to the edge of self-inflicted disaster. This intensified the search by global institutions for an economic model that really addressed the issues. They found the new Peruvian Model already in place which put Peru ahead of Switzerland and Sweden on a number of criteria (but not yet, of course, in terms of Net National Income per head), and it is shortly to be adopted – by consent – by almost all the countries of the European Union and the US, China and Russia are to follow. The year is 2025.

And yet the PM almost didn’t happen – no, not even in Peru. In the election of 2011 there had been a bizarre vote-counting fraud.  Ex-President Toledo, Vargas Llosa and Humala had led the campaign for a re-run, whilst Fujimori’s daughter had disowned both her party and her father and set up a new political campaign taking 75% of her Congress representatives with her. The at-one-time unlikely trio had formed a national coalition emergency government bringing in the new much-vaunted education policy and the other features of the (new) Peruvian Model.”

 Fact or fiction? We will know in a few days!

4. WHY THE PERUVIAN MODEL (PM) IS MORE THAN ECONOMICS
The existing Economic Model (EM) has been declared sacred. The Cardinal-Archbishop says so. It’s been beatified and is well on its way to sainthood.

Though it’s not a “model.” It has some elements of the neo-liberal and monetarist but not all. There are still many blocks to competition.

Often what politicians are referring to is not much more than a “feel-good factor for some sectors,” driven by exceptional growth rates. The Euro-American (US) world is in economic crisis but Peru’s economy has averaged 8 percent growth over five years. These high rates are put down to temporary features – such as a boom in raw material prices, a massive inflow of foreign capital, a low dollar – and also to more fundamental changes such as forming stronger links to China, implying a shift from US dependency.

The PM is a much more “complex and sensitive modeling” that includes multiple creative corners of Peruvian society – which surface from time to time in the Peruvian Times. Let’s attempt to list the major changes (to explanatory factors in the model) over the last few decades.

5. THE MANY CONTRIBUTORS TO THE SUCCESS OF THE PAST SEVERAL YEARS
The more permanent changes – and therefore the more reliable in the long run – include more women professionals in the economy; more people from the Peruvian heartlands (andinos and others) in professional and executive jobs; a crackdown on corruption[4] and immunity (Paniagua and Toledo administrations); a welcoming attitude to information technologies; some dividend from the expansion of Conafu-universities; a “delayed” but improved public infrastructure; a breakthrough into international markets; low import taxes; more Peruvians abroad (returning reskilled / sending remittances); more irrigated land; a “diversification of spiritual / religious life” (secularization, growth of new religions); some inroads into the “low trust” society[5]; a renaissance of cultural life; some intercultural education; ecologism; some success in titling (titulation of invaded land etc); very dynamic marginal informal sectors with a more robust process of formalization; balancing the national budget (= low inflation); some progress with “continuity” – public servants who finish or are allowed to finish the job; and the list – not written in any particular order – continues.

6. THE MAGIC SOMETHING THAT HAS GONE RIGHT FOR PERU

In brief, the PM is much more than the economic model. It has multiple sectors, a variety of actors and is intensely “Peruvian.” It is the “something” that we recognize as successful and which the electorate wants to keep. But it has not been well identified by the political process – partly because of the nature of the second round system. Many of the leaders, innovators and creative entrepreneurs who have been responsible for the model and its success have rallied recently to the Humala banner – some because they fear that the authoritarian government plus under-regulated markets of the Fujimori formula will stunt the creativity of the “real Peru,” as would restrictions on the associated democratic model (a clampdown on democratic freedoms).

In short, the aim of this article is to disentangle the “Economic Model” (EM) from the actual “Peruvian Model” (PM[6] – the real Peru). The EM has become sacred scripture for political debate: “I swear I will abide by the ten commandments of the Economic Model.” The EM is the market plus monetarism while the Peruvian model, or formula, is a far richer being and describes (or attempts to describe – because it is a massive task) what has been happening in Peru.

7. CHINA AND PERU

China[7] has taken enormous strides in building human capital. The adult literacy rate is now almost 95 per cent, and secondary school enrolment rates are up to 80 per cent. Shanghai’s 15-year-old students were recently ranked first globally in mathematics and reading as per the standardized PISA metric. Chinese universities now graduate more than 1.5 million engineers and scientists annually. The country is well on its way to a knowledge-based economy.

Peru has had good literacy and secondary school rates for some time but has significantly failed to give emphasis to mathematics, engineering and science and has been almost entirely negligent about teaching Reading & Writing in the students’ parental language.

8. INTERNATIONAL VIEWPOINT

The eyes of the world are on Peru at this time of a critical election. The “BBC de Londres” views the election as  a choice between “wallets and consciences.” It adds that “Keiko Fujimori’s last name, for many Peruvians, is synonymous with the destruction of democratic institutions, systemic corruption and a murderous counter-insurgency against Maoist Shining Path guerrillas in the 1990s.

Voting with your conscience would mean voting for Ollanta Humala, a former army officer who calls himself a nationalist. An essay on democracy, economy, history and the election.” However although this view is qualified in the text, emphasizing the “wallets and consciences” aspect is not representative of this election.

9. EL LIDERAZGO DEL PAIS, con algunas excepciones, no ha apreciado el recurso más precioso del Perú: su gente

Why should this be written in (bad) Spanish? Well, I was chatting to this bloke in 1974. We were having tea together in his garden, over the road from the “Golf” in San Isidro and this is how the quote is remembered: “ la razón – tal vez la razón principal – que la tasa del desarrollo del Peru en el pasado no ha sido ‘satisfecha’ es que el liderazgo del país, con algunas excepciones, no ha apreciado el recurso más precioso del Perú, su gente…Y..su gente merece la mejor educación.”  (The reason – perhaps the main reason – why Peru’s development rate in the past has not been ‘satisfied’ is that the country’s leadership, with some exceptions, has not appreciated Peru’s most precious resource: its people…. And… its people deserve the best education.”

And for that, a priority must be given to educational reform. The bloke was an ex-President of Peru who had been toppled by a coup.

10. WHY THE ELECTORAL SYSTEM IS “UNFAIR” AND DOES NOT APPROXIMATE TO DEMOCRACY

The electoral system says that Peruvians have to vote but at the same time the “segunda vuelta” system deprives them of the candidates that they might prefer.

The long interval between the first and second rounds allows the media, if they so choose, time to character-assassinate a presidential candidate.

As my grandson would say, “It’s not fair.” So let’s have a (somewhat lighthearted) look at a couple or so of the other quirky aspects of Peruvian political history.

11. THERE ARE STILL SOME THINGS TO BE LEARNED FROM HISTORY: the worse the record, it seems the more likely the president will be voted back

Definition: There is a type of Peruvian president who performs – or whose term of office ends – so disastrously that the electorate clamor for his or his party’s return some years later. This defies normal logic and is, que se sepa, a feature unique to the Peruvian electoral process. It could be explained as late colonial psychosis, electorate amnesia and the psephology of the segunda vuelta.

Exhibit A: García (1985-90) who led – or perhaps fed – his nation to the dogs: he was voted back in 2006.

Exhibit B: Fujimori who oversaw massacres of the innocent and the biggest corruption scandal in the Americas, ever, and then ran away to Japan, was impeached, extradited and imprisoned for 25 years: his party is currently on track for winning 2011, even though he himself is in prison.

12. THE BLUNDY: the more decent the president, the more likely to be toppled.

There have been quite a few Peruvian presidents whose term of office ended prematurely  – sometimes through no fault of their own – because of a coup d’état, putsch or assassination. A sub-category of this type could be called the Blundy, who is a Peruvian president of any name who is a good democrat, fair and even-handed and thinks of his country before he thinks of his pocket. Their policies are blocked – usually by APRA – and they themselves are then toppled by a military coup or putsch as being too “weak for the job.” Blundies, it might be said, blunder into well-meaning deep water.

Exhibit C: Bustamante y Rivero was seen as a great talent, a “good democratic chap,” a constitutionalist (and/but an Arequipeño) who was blocked by APRA and then ousted by a military coup d’état. 

Exhibit D: Belaunde – a “blundy” (gringo pronunciation of belaunde) is named after this president. He was another decent chap whose policies, had they been enacted, might have proved the salvation of his country. But they were blocked by APRA (again?) and in the ensuing crisis . . . (hold on – we’re coming to the point) . . .

“Belaunde was ousted by a military coup and the armed forces under Gen. Velasco governed for (a number of) years. Then agrarian reform miscarried disastrously, they took over channels of communication – press, TV, radio, (and they) discouraged foreign investment at every turn. Gen. Morales Bermudez of the moderate army faction engineered the displacement of Velasco & eventually, opened the way to free elections, when Belaunde made a triumphal (but over-confident) come-back. The Apra party under Alan Garcia, was voted in (in 1985) and just about ruined the economy, leaving large debts and almost complete rupture with foreign sources of funding. When Fujimori was voted in I don’t think he fully realized the state of the exchequer. Then came the fam(ous) “Fuji-shock” which caused much hardship but eventually stabilized the economy. Fuji also combated the then rampant terrorism that cost (thousands) of lives on all sides, drove people away from their homelands & brought destruction to the very streets of Lima. Extreme poverty especially in the hinterland was undoubtedly a root cause of terrorism. And there was much violent repression – it was a war.”

The passage above is quoted from Peggy Massey who was a long-serving journalist with the Peruvian Times, the now-defunct La Prensa and also other publications. She composed this as a handwritten addenda to Pike, F. “A History of Modern Peru.” Peggy wrote, I think, in the spirit that Pike had finished his book just before the Velasco military coup and arguably before one of the turning points in Peruvian history. Future readers of her copy deserved a sequel!  Peggy Massey is better known for her bilingual series Good Morning, Buenos Días in La Prensa 1969-1980.

13.PERU AND KOREA’S ECONOMIES UNDER THE LENS

Returning to the graph above to compare Peru’s performance with that of Chile and, particularly, one of the Asian Tigers: South Korea.

In 1960 South Korea was just five years out of probably the most traumatic period of its history. The country had endured thirty-five years of colonization (by Japan 1910-1945) and then became during the next decade an ideological battleground for the US, the UK & other Allies on the one hand and China & Russia. And a playground for their tanks, bombers and warships. The country had been flattened – hardly a building or factory left standing.

In a nutshell: Starting from virtually zero around 1955, Korea overtook both Chile and Peru in 1973.

Between 1960 and 1982 Chile and Peru had roughly similar output per head (Chile: blue balls. Peru: faint yellow balls or black line), averaging approx US$ 2K (2,000).

In 1982 the international sovereign debt crisis hits both Chile and Peru and Sendero Luminoso starts up operations in earnest, driving out foreign capital and reducing everyday economic life to a shambles and the center of Lima to an apocalyptic state.

Until 1982 Peru had just about level-pegged with Chile but after that the wider effects of Sendero (see chart from 1982) were made even wider by the “Garcia Gulf” (see 1987). From that date the gap with Chile and also Korea really opens up as Sendero and the García “policies” bite harder. In 2000 the unlikely twosome of Jorge Chavez in the Central Bank and Carlos Boloña in the Treasury steered Fujimori and the Peruvian economy into orthodoxy, towards a balanced budget and controlled inflation. However the peace dividend heralded by the capture of Sendero boss Guzmán and the growing economy was squandered in the Montesinos corruption scandals. To cut a long story short, by 2007 Korea had twice the per capita output of Chile, which in turn had twice the output of Peru – per person.

The Korean performance had been almost consistently positive as Peru’s had been negative. Even the South-East Asia Financial Crisis (see chart 1997) had hardly deflected Korea from its upward growth track. How had Korea achieved this?

Korea was armed with its weapons of mass construction: a superb “double” education system; high levels of inter-personal respect and trust; team-playing family-entrepreneurial technologically-creative enterprises; massive injections of US capital and troop expenditure; we-can-build-it-better-than-you mentality (One French TGV train was bought stripped down and several scores of lighter, faster Korean versions reconstructed); a brand new infrastructure (the demobbed army was sucked up into a massive reconstruction machine that went on later to rebuild more than its fair share of the growing globalized economy); a prime location (the vectors between Beijing &Tokyo and that between Shanghai & Vladivostok cross at Seoul); a spiritual life based around urban, engagé, reformed Christianity (after their double dose of education from 8am to 8pm, Korean scholars pop into their local church for a game of ping-pong) and rural Buddhism (week-end excursions can be to a family shrine); a common enemy (Japan, somewhat replaced by North Korea); colonial masters who had been on the technological ascendency (Spain left a technologically-backward economy and an unreformed anti-science Catholicism in Peru and Chile);  99.9% honest and punctual (at least outside government!).

Well, it´s getting late so we had better stop this ever so slightly over-egged Korean eulogy. And the lesson[8] from all this?

Avoid civil war and the “resurgence of insurgency” at all costs! Create a fairer society.

Boycott

And oh! If you are thinking of boycotting the election, you will not only incur a fine – if you are under 70 – in Peru but also be accused of reusing another of these “blundy” words. Boycott* is defined as follows: “To abstain from or act together in abstaining from using, buying, or dealing with – as an expression of protest or disfavor or as a means of coercion.” It is derived from the name[9] of Charles C. Boycott.

14. CONCLUSION: go for a high-trust, knowledge-based economy

This article argues that Peru has a once in a decade chance of catching up with not only the other two economies on the Chart above (Chile and Korea) but even the “really high income” countries in the subsequent table (e.g. Norway).

It can do this by investing selectively but massively in education. It should cut taxes to any families and organizations who support learners of any age through individual sponsorship schemes. Schools will attract the most able students irrespective of class, creed or ethnic background. The government should further cut taxes to encourage companies to locate not only their extractive and agricultural activities but also their “knowledge-based” operations such as R&D. Mining companies, for example, would then effectively be paying the school and university fees of local children rather than pouring funds into the black hole of Lima, or worse, lining the pockets of government ministers.

A high-trust economy should be encouraged by ditching the mestizo-first policies in favor of multiple heritage social policies (no ethnic background privileged). A second line of defense would give special help to the less able students.  In higher education, external examiners of master’s courses would be given greater powers and independence. All teachers would be offered further training.

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http://www.zotero.org/groups/perustudies/items/collection/R3PWH9BI

Business is betting that Keiko will be first past the post in a photo-finish

By Nicholas Asheshov  —

If the secret polls are right, and the stock market, which shot sharply up seven points on Thursday, clearly thinks they are, Keiko Fujimori will squeak past Ollanta Humala to win the run-off election on Sunday June 5 and become president as of July 28, 2011 through 2016.

As Keiko-backers see things, there was a nasty moment, polls-wise, over last week-end and at the beginning of the week when Datum’s three-point lead for Keiko, announced Sunday, slid to just a sliver and headed south.

Two or three weeks ago the tight-knit Keiko squad had been confident of a safe though perhaps not solid victory.  But reacting with a touch of panic, a word used by one of her advisors, to the week-end slouch in the polls, Keiko rallied the troops, and on Thursday morning the TV programs showed Keiko wheeling out Pedro Pablo Kuczynski, Hernando de Soto, Mercedes Araoz, Maximo San Roman, Luis Castañeda and others –the solid, as they themselves see it, capable Center-Right.  Perhaps a bit of a muddled middle, but that is a characteristic of the hard-core center everywhere.

On Thursday evening PPK was the key-note speaker, apart from Keiko herself.  He had got 18+% of the votes in the first round on April 10, behind Keiko’s 23.5% and Thursday’s collection of anti-Humala worthies turned this into a pro-Keiko governing alliance.

Humala, a dangerous far-left fascist-montesinista, as Gustavo Gorriti and Alvaro Vargas Llosa among others, called him in the last election, is of course also seeking the votes of the same people of which there are surely now few.  The polls, the TV shows and the newspapers show a country passionately divided down the middle into anti-Humalas and anti-Keikos.

The one-half of the country that will vote for Keiko on Sunday see Humala as a re-run of the blundering statists of the 1970s, here and elsewhere, and their re-runs in Venezuela, Bolivia and Argentina today.

The Lima intellectuals, the Caviars, led noisily today by the died-in-the-wool Thatcherite Nobel laureate Mario Vargas Llosa, who treated Humala as an untouchable in 2006 and, in fact, till just a few weeks ago, today bill him as the last rampart of democracy against a reprise of the bad old ’90s when bullying kleptocrats, with Alberto Fujimori as president, cut a vicious swathe through Lima.  Keiko has become today’s untouchable.

Keiko and her people say they will be the first to steer clear of any new version of closed-door corruption.  They say that Keiko, 36, is first of all an unusually, perhaps unexpectedly capable, decisive administrator with five years as a congresswoman on her CV.   Certainly her campaign stump style has been as polished and silver-tongued as anyone’s.

Quite sharp, too: she told Humala on the TV to go and talk it over with her dad in jail if he wanted to complain about the old days.   She easily trounced the gloomily confused zoot-suited “Comandante” Humala in a last-ditch TV face-to-face on Sunday evening, and this was reflected in the poll figures used by the bankers and stock-brokers who came back to the market in mid-week.

Money talks as clearly here as elsewhere and what the market is saying is that it expects from a Fujimori government all the good things and more that it got from Alberto Fujimori 1990-95 in the way of pro-business, pro-growth legislation and non-bloated administration.

This may not have been such a many-splendored thing but it was so much better than the economic nonsense of the previous 30 years that it stands out as Peru’s first 15 minutes of flame.

Other effects are flowering a decade and more later.   Indices of poverty have come down sharply for millions of campesinos, according to studies being produced regularly by Richard Webb’s Instituto del Peru.

It was Fujimori I who introduced privatization, more sensible tax codes and up-graded public works –roads, electrification, schools.  The follow-up Toledo (2001-6) and Garcia (2006-11) administrations have bumbled through along these same lines, backed by record copper, gold, silver and other metals prices. This has come together with an international you-can’t-go-wrong easy money financial market.

This international bounty is a far cry from Fujimori 2 (1995-2001) and, of course, from Garcia I (1985-90).  And it will certainly too, be a distance from the shortening of commodity prices, the increase in inflation, the fall of the dollar that many bankers and businessmen are expecting for fasten-your-belts 2012+.

This is not the time, the Keiko people say, to be fooling around with state-run experiments that have never worked outside Northern Europe.  This is not just a question of political culture.  The Scandinavian model needs a tradition of administrators and, with it, a ton of real money.

This would not be the case with the motley crew of up-the-workers political drifters who have wandered into the Humala camp.  Been there, done that.

This is what Keiko Inc has been trying to get across these past few months without, a la peruana, actually saying so.  The code for this is:  We Must Abolish Poverty.  Keiko says, Grow out of poverty.  Humala says, Take it, Redistribute.

The juxtapositions of prominent names on both sides shimmered through the social pyramid as mobs sacked downtown Puno, including an army barracks, customs warehouses and the tax office.  “Humalists in Terror Infierno” said one headline.   It was so bad that it looked as though Puno, with 800,000 voters, would not vote on Sunday.   But things have calmed down for the moment because most of these votes are for Humala.

On a machete-edge call like Sunday’s, those votes will all count. 

It has been an undistinguished campaign, these past several weeks.  Humala has focused on the inglorious past, and Keiko on a don’t-rock-the-canoe future.  There has been no talk, excepting earlier from PPK, of Peru in a world where Peruvians are young, unlike the Chinese and Europeans, nor of nano-technology, genetics and climate change, of viral pandemics and the fall-out from Moslem arcs-of-instabilit. 

Neither of the candidates has made any promise to reform the judicial system root-and-branch and both have solid reasons for reticence even though all the voters understand that this is a top priority.  Humala has been financed illegally and almost openly by millions of dollars in suitcases from Col. Chavez in Caracas, and he is facing witness-tampering and torture court cases, and he has a brother doing a 25-year stretch for political murders which Ollanta himself instigated, according to electronic taps, now public.  Meanwhile Keiko has a father also doing 25 years for human rights violations, with scores of fin-de-siecle generals and ministers also behind bars.

Looking a month or three into the future one of Peru’s top business figures warns of big problems in the Congress for whoever is president, and indeed some new congressmen have already been migrating from the party for which they were elected –for instance Yehude Simon, a former PM, has switched from PPK to Humala.

But it is the overall quality of the new membership that has the business leader worried.  He says: “Compared with the incoming 2011-16) Congress, we will look back on the present (2005-2011) Congress as if it had been the classic Greek agora of Socrates and Plato.”

Nick Asheshov, editor of the Peruvian Times from 1969 to 1990, is a director of The Machu Picchu Train Co., Urubamba.

OP-ED: Why Humala?

By Eleanor Griffis,
Peruvian Times Publisher ~

Two weeks ago, presidential candidate Ollanta Humala took an oath to abide by a list of 12 conditions that would ensure the defense of democracy and rule of law if he is elected president.

The event was significant but it didn’t get much press coverage, other than that it was “yet another plan.”  Hardly surprising, given that the major press groups are openly rooting for Keiko Fujimori.

But the event was important not only because Humala was willing to publicly adjust his program to more centrist demands and points of view, but because the witnesses to this oath were among the cream of Peru’s intellectual community.

He already had the public support of Nobel writer Mario Vargas Llosa, who introduced the event via teleconference from Madrid, and of close to one hundred leading archaeologists, anthropologists, physicians, economists, former cabinet ministers, artists, and even the country’s leading nuclear physicist (people who industry captain José Chlimper, on Fujimori’s team, referred to as “losers”).

Now, standing in the colonial lecture hall of San Marcos University, Humala gathered even more like-minded leaders as witnesses to demand that he live up to his promise – including film director Lucho Llosa, Accion Popular party president Javier Alva-Orlandini, Peruvian Environmental Law Society director Jorge Caillaux, and psychiatrists of the stature of Saul Peña, Mariano Querol and Cesar Rodriguez-Rabanal. Not to mention Alvaro Vargas Llosa, son of Mario and an outspoken critic of the mindset of most of left-wing Latin America.

This was no rabble of dispossessed malcontents.  These are people who are internationally recognized specialists in their field, many of whom have a deeper understanding than most of us of what Peru is really all about, and who are willing to think outside the box.  With the exception of politician Alva Orlandini and activists such as sculptor Victor Delfin, they are also people who rarely voice their support publicly for any one or other politician.

A few days after this historic oath-taking, the Fujimori campaign did something similar – they surrounded Keiko in an evening fest with some of Peru’s leading surfers, football players, rap singers and dancers.   People who are valid and great fun, but I doubt many of us would seek their advice when it comes to making national decisions.

The driving premise behind the support to Humala is what novelist Alonso Cueto calls “the moral essence.”

Because there may be valid concerns about where Humala is coming from, but there is an absolute certainty as to where Keiko Fujimori will lead us.

To believe that Fujimori will govern us differently to the way her father did is to be very naïve.  I have no doubt she is well intentioned, she is young and saw what damage corruption causes, but watching her in the debate against Ollanta Humala on Sunday made it obvious that she will be no match to the machinery that surrounds her.  Her government team and most of her members of Congress are die-hard Fujimoristas who served in her father’s government and adamantly continue to defend him and his policies, openly threatening the judges who convicted him of human rights abuses and corruption.

And despite her denials of a continuation of the 1990-2000 Fujimori regime, the propaganda throughout the highlands shows Alberto Fujimori standing behind her. Not to mention that the campaign center is just a short walk from ex-President Fujimori’s prison cell, which can quite fairly lead us to believe that the campaign is being run from his quarters.

President Fujimori’s regime is rightfully credited with ushering us into the 21^st century (highways, mobile phones, online documentary processes) and of quelling terrorism (although Sendero Luminoso leader Abimael Guzman was caught by a tight investigative police team that suffered budget cuts under Fujimori and had to find funding from USAID).

But his government is also rightfully accused of stealing more than $6 billion, working the drug trafficking and money laundering network to its advantage, and of “black ops” that included phone tapping, blackmail, threats and murder.

Yet it is the insidious corruption on other levels that caused the greater damage. It was a bread and circus policy: Hand out the food and keep them entertained, and they won’t notice what we’re doing in the back.

Buying the editorial line of almost all the cash-strapped TV stations and the tabloid press meant not only a daily barrage of headlines conjuring up fear or bashing someone in the opposition, it also led to a dumbing down that Peru had never seen before and from which we still have not recovered (the comedians are still there and the journalists have come strutting back): once fairly good stand-up comedians became vulgar propagandists who mercilessly mocked and maligned anyone in the opposition, reality and gossip shows were created to lower and numb people’s decency threshold, and TV news shows became vehicles to lie outright, mock, malign and bash anyone and everyone who would not submit to the Fujimori-Montesinos plan.

Reputations were ruined by absolute fabrications, key civil servants who refused to do the government’s bidding were blocked from finding even private sector jobs and had to emigrate. Judges were fired and replaced by temporarily-appointed judges, subservient to the hand that fed them. Members of congress jumped the aisle for pieces of silver. Non-governmental and human rights organizations became four-letter words. And when the government began to fall apart in the reelection of 2000, the Fujimori-Montesinos machine was willing to kill six watchmen in the Banco de la Nacion arson fire in order to place the blame on firebrand Alejandro Toledo.

Even, or maybe especially, leaders in the business community were held prey, either blackmailed or pressured with personal or corporate indiscretions to endorse a government policy or position.  They gave credence to the business world beyond our borders.

Shortly after Fujimori fled to Japan, an Organization of American States team was working closely with the transitional government to pick up the pieces and part of this new government was a rotating multi-sector board, including business leaders, assigned to clean up and design new guidelines essential for moving forward.

It was during this time that a guest speaker at a business luncheon had to leave early to take his turn at this rotating board later that day. A key figure in the mining industry, he apologized to his peers for leaving early, adding with a shrug of his shoulders and a deprecating smirk “for whatever good it will do.”  Cynicism, or toeing the line?

When a leaked video of a junior congressman receiving money from Montesinos blew the ten-year regime out of the water, the acceptance of corruption was so pervasive that a survey in state high-schools shortly afterward showed that an overwhelming majority of pupils said they would accept the bribe, because if they didn’t “someone else would.”

To quote Alberto Fujimori, there was a generalized attitude of “hey, I wasn’t born yesterday” (no soy ningún caído del palto) and “tough luck” (yuca).

None of Keiko Fujimori’s team who worked in her father’s government seem to have any regrets for the way things were done, and they are determined to set Alberto Fujimori free (See Gustavo Gorriti’s Wikileaks story on the 2006 Alberto Fujimori and the Replacement Candidacy).

Fujimori has promised she will not pardon her father – legally impossible for human rights crimes — but there are other ways to seek his release, such as a Constitutional Court ruling to annul the sentence on the argument that the criminal court judges were partial (something of this is in the works, but it has created accusations of pressure and corruption within the Constitutional Court itself), or of finding some contrived “authentic meaning” to some procedure, an argument that Fujimori used for his re-reelection in 2000.

The next question is, then, if Alberto Fujimori is released or given house-arrest status, how long will it be before his jailed military and police generals and cabinet ministers demand their release too.  The fact that President Fujimori’s first finance minister, Juan Carlos Hurtado Miller, has come out of hiding after 10 years must mean something other than he’s just tired of the same four walls.

And Montesinos?  Will he remain placidly in his cell, when he can probably still pull many of the strings of power, if he doesn’t continue to do so anyway?

The current Business Track trial shows that phone-tapping is still alive and well and possibly conducted by those who were doing it 10 years ago.  Why would there not be a library of 1990-2000 videos of the Fujimori-Montesinos era stashed away somewhere, ready to be used as necessary? Fujimori fled to Japan with suitcases of videos, but why wouldn’t there be security copies somewhere?

Neither Mario Vargas Llosa, nor his son Alvaro, nor Peru’s leaders in the scientific, academic and artistic communities are giving Ollanta Humala carte blanche – they are there as referees for democracy, the rule of law, and human rights.

If Humala becomes president he will have lots of time bombs to defuse and half the country will be eager to demand their long-denied rights. But the alternative is far worse.  And if democracy, rule of law and human rights are not a priority, the economy will not remain healthy for long.

Giuliani Now Fighting the War of Terror in Peru

By Dennis Jett*
Professor of International Affairs, Penn State University ~

While George W. Bush called it the War on Terror during his time in office, the War of Terror would have been a more accurate name. That’s because it was used to scare voters into reelecting Bush despite an accomplishment-free first term. That strategy is now being used in Peru for the same purpose with one of the same combatants — Rudy Giuliani.

On June 5th, Peruvians will be required to go to the polls and vote for one of the top two finishers from the first round of their presidential election. That will be, in the words of Peru’s Nobel Prize-winning writer, Mario Vargas Llosa, like choosing between AIDS and cancer.

One choice is Keiko Fujimori, the 35-year-old daughter of Alberto Fujimori. He is currently serving a 25-year prison sentence for human rights violations committed while he was president in the 1990s. She has no significant experience, other than a couple years in the Peruvian congress, and there are indications that her father has been running her campaign from his cell.

The other option is Ollanta Humala, a former military officer, coup plotter and suspected human rights violator. He finished second in the election five years ago and may have lost because he associated himself with the Venezuelan dictator, Hugo Chavez. This time he bought himself some Brazilian political advisors, a suit and a new set of talking points in order to sound less extreme.

Peruvians don’t seem convinced about Humala’s newfound moderation, however, as Fujimori is ahead in the polls. She is being helped by her father’s reputation for having defeated terrorism. While terrorism is no longer a significant problem, Peruvians are still concerned about their safety. A recent poll showed 72 percent of those who live in Lima fear being victimized by crime and 21 percent said they had been in the last year.

The challenge for Ms. Fujimori therefore was to take advantage of that insecurity without uttering the name of her jailed father. She solved that problem by hiring Rudy Giuliani, the former mayor of New York, to parade around as her “security consultant” and appear with her at campaign rallies.

What Peruvians don’t understand is how little Giuliani has to offer. It is not just, as Joe Biden once said, that Giuliani can’t say a single sentence that does not include a reference to himself and 9/11. If he were just another Big Apple blowhard competing with Donald Trump to see who could be the most ridiculous presidential pretender, that would be one thing.

It is the absurdity of his claim to be a public safety guru that should earn Giuliani a Nobel Prize for phoniness. As the book Freakonomics makes clear, there were several reasons for the drop in crime in New York City and none of them had anything to do with Mayor Giuliani.

To the contrary, he is remembered for having named Bernie Kerik as his Police Commissioner and it was his recommendation that led President Bush to nominate Kerik for the position of Secretary of Homeland Security. Kerik is currently serving a four-year prison term after having pled guilty to multiple felonies.

Aside from lacking judgment about his subordinates, Giuliani also had no idea what al Qaeda was prior to 9/11 and left the city unprepared for the attack. He was seen aimlessly wandering the streets of the city that day after having to evacuate his $60 million police command center. That’s because he ignored his advisors and insisted it be placed in a building next to the Twin Towers that also collapsed when the buildings fell. He put it there because having it close to city hall made it a more convenient place to meet his mistress.

Peruvians apparently aren’t the only ones being fooled by Giuliani. One article reporting on his role there mentioned he had been paid over $4 million dollars to provide security advice to crime-ridden Mexico City.

One can only wonder how much he is collecting to intervene in Peruvian politics and where that money came from. While he laughs his way to the bank, it will remain to be seen whether he helps scare enough voters to ensure Ms. Fujimori’s victory and, in effect, her father’s reelection.

*Professor of International Affairs, Penn State University, and former U.S. Ambassador to Peru 1996-1999. (Op-Ed re-published with express permission of the author. This piece initially appeared on McClatchy and Huffington Post sites.)

Analyst: Garcia to leave an “explosive” drug trade inheritance for successor

President Alan Garcia is set to step down in just over two months and will leave his successor an “explosive inheritance” in Peru’s growing drug trade, sociologist and expert on the drug trade Jaime Antezana said.

During Garcia’s term (2006-11), Peru has seen growing trend in the hectares used to cultivate coca, the raw material used to make cocaine. In 2005, coca crops were grown on 48,200 hectares. This increased to 59,900 hectares in 2009, according to a recent UN report. Read more…

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