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Peru Elects Corrupt Bungling Ex-President Over Nationalist Fire-Eater

Former president Alan García defeated nationalist candidate Ollanta Humala in Sunday’s runoff election, earning a second chance to lead the country he steered to economic devastation in the 1980s. García campaigned to protect Peru’s free-trade economy from what he portrayed as the false promise of Latin American populism, arguing that Humala’s plan to exert more […]

Former president Alan García defeated nationalist candidate Ollanta Humala in Sunday’s runoff election, earning a second chance to lead the country he steered to economic devastation in the 1980s.

García campaigned to protect Peru’s free-trade economy from what he portrayed as the false promise of Latin American populism, arguing that Humala’s plan to exert more state control over Peru’s mining and energy sectors would isolate the country economically and discourage private investment. ~The Washington Post

Mr. Garcia, from the old school of disastrous economic mismanagement and veniality, now serves as one of the rallying points for Western anti-populist sentiment in South America, which tells you something about how desperate Washington is to find any good news in the midst of the ever-increasing Chavista miasma. I feel sorry for the Peruvians–they were not offered much of a choice (“responsible” leftism vs. populist leftism) and gave the presidential victory to the representative of the urban interests while empowering Humala’s followers in their legislature and making them the largest fraction. If Bolivia is any guide, this is a recipe for years of political instability and protest as the largely Indian constituency of the populist movement adamantly resists the new government and eventually manages to cripple it and then bring it down.

Peru has dodged the populist bullet only for a short time, but the underlying reasons for Humala’s political strength in the countryside have not changed. Neo-liberalism, being a not-very-subtle cover for serving multinational corporate interests at the expense of existing economic structures, is the natural enemy of the large rural, agricultural sections of every South American country, and will cause still more backlashes as “free trade” policies go forward in their countries.

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