WHY PERU TILTED LEFT. By Max Cameron and Fabiola Bazo

Vote-splitting and bitter memories of Alberto Fujimori handed the left a victory.

What can explain the election of a leftist, nationalist, anti-system candidate in a country that has experienced extraordinary rates of economic growth and significant poverty reduction for the better part of the past decade?

In the first place, the explanation lies in the failure of centre-right candidates in Peru to co-ordinate their strategies around a single leader. Had the democratic right not split its vote between former president Alejandro Toledo (2001-2006) and his erstwhile premier and finance minister Pedro Pablo Kuczynski, the outcome might well have been a pro-system, free market-oriented president with a strong mandate.

In a run-off, Toledo would probably have won handily over either victor Ollanta Humala or Keiko Fujimori. In technical terms, he was the Condorcet winner.

The division of the centre-right in the first round, on April 10, opened the door to a run-off between extremists on June 5. Logically, they had to compete for votes in the centre. Humala moderated his image, abandoning Bolivarian rhetoric from his earlier campaign in 2006, and instead posturing as an apostle of the highly successful former president of Brazil, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.

The conversion to moderation and democratic respectability was difficult to sell. Many voters remembered that Humala led a military uprising in 2000, in the dying days of the Alberto Fujimori government, and later offered rhetorical support to an ill-conceived rebellion in Andahuaylas led by his brother, Antauro, in 2005. His own record in combat as a soldier in the 1990s suggested possible human-rights abuses.

But Humala’s competition had to make an equally difficult sales pitch. Keiko Fujimori tried to shake charges that she only sought power in order to free her father, Alberto, who is currently serving a 25-year prison term for human-rights crimes and corruption during his term in office, from 1990 to 2000.

She claimed, unpersuasively, that she would not pardon her father; worse still, her campaign elicited memories of her father’s autocratic and corrupt style, and her entourage included many faces from his government. She handed out food in exchange for support, and ostensibly allowed campaign operations to be run out of her father’s prison compound.

There were rumours that Alan Garcia, the sitting president, was placing intelligence operations at her service, as he had in 1990 when Alberto Fujimori was first elected. In the final days of the campaign, a telemarketer, posing as part of Humala’s campaign, spread rumors that Humala would expel Chileans from Peru, mistreat investors, or was being promoted by Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez.

As the election date drew near, there were multitudinous protests against Keiko Fujimori that reminded Peruvians about human-rights abuses – including massive programs of sterilization of women without their consent – during her father’s reign.

In the end, the outcome of the election was a replay of 2006, except that Humala narrowly won rather than lost. As before, he won by a considerable margin in rural areas, especially the southern highlands, where Peru’s indigenous and peasant voters expressed, yet again, their desire for change. He fought hard to win votes in Lima and the coast, where prosperity has trickled down more rapidly, but was outpolled by Fujimori by a margin of 3 to 2.

For some observers, the idea of a Humala victory in 2011 was inconceivable. It was thought that if he lost in 2006, surely he would win even fewer votes this time around after another five years of growth. It was precisely this overconfidence that led the centre-right to fail to unify behind a single candidate with broad appeal. Moreover, after five years of growth, prosperity remained unequally distributed and heavily concentrated in Lima and the coast.

For years, social scientists have insisted that Peru’s democracy needs strong political parties, and its open economy, export-driven model must be more inclusive. These pleas have all too often been met with complacent yawns and smug rebuffs. “Peru has never had strong parties,” said some. “Modernity can be achieved through growth first; prosperity will trickle down over time,” said others.

As a result, Peruvians have managed to elect an anti-system candidate who has no real party organization, 46 seats in a 130-seat legislature, and a very weak mandate from the people. He will govern in a climate of hostility from the media, business, and much of the political establishment. Yet he has created expectations among his followers and he will have to deliver results.

Humala would do well to follow the model of Lula, as he has promised. He should provide reassurances to investors. This does not preclude mutually agreeable renegotiation of contracts; indeed, several contracts negotiated in the 1990s are soon due to expire and have to be renewed. He should also focus much of his energy on poverty alleviation in the areas most neglected by previous administrations.

He should make political reforms a top priority, but not with a wholesale rewriting of the constitution. The most pressing reforms don’t require constitutional change; they demand a vigorous modernization of Peru’s corrupt and inefficient judiciary and penal system.

Humala should root out malfeasance in public administration wherever possible. Drug trafficking has become a major problem in Peru, and it has started to penetrate the highest levels of power.

Finally, Humala can put Peru in step with the rest of the Andean sub-region by adopting new participatory innovations – referenda and recall, citizen initiatives, community councils, policy consultations. Participatory budgeting is already being practised in municipalities throughout Peru. Consultations with indigenous people should be used routinely to address resource extraction on ancestral lands.

All this can be done within the framework of Peru’s democracy, while fully respecting basic constitutional precepts and the rule of law. The real question, however, may be whether Humala can deliver the goods.

ACTUALIZACIÓN 5/6: HUMALA IS BEST FOR DEMOCRACY IN PERU. By Max Cameron and Michael Marx McCarthy

Gracias a los amigos de La Mula, ahora es el turno de postear el interesante análisis titulado Humala is best for democracy in Peru, escrito por Max Cameron y Michael Marx McCarthy. Max Cameron, un especialista en Perú, es Profesor de Ciencias Politicas en el Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions at the University of British Columbia, y Michael Marx McCarthy es un candidato a un doctirado en ciencias políticas de la Johns Hopkins University. Otro imperdible:

This Sunday, when Peruvians go to the polls to elect a new single-term president, they will be casting their ballots in an echo chamber of analogies.

In politics, analogies can make game changing differences. Saddam Hussein was an Adolf Hitler. Nelson Mandela fathered a new South Africa. Obama represents the Joshua generation.

Sometimes these analogies hit the mark. They can reveal a profound truth by finding a hidden connection. Other times, they are more like card tricks, revealing less than they hide.

The front-runner in the first round of the election, Ollanta Humala, has been compared to Hugo Chávez. According to his critics, he would trample on Peru’s democratic institutions and create a self-perpetuating quasi-dictatorship.

The other candidate, Keiko Fujimori, has been called a Trojan horse who would take Peru back to the decade of the 1990s when her father ruled through a combination of bribery, blackmail, and abuse of power.

These analogies are both true and false.

Humala would not govern like Chávez because conditions in Peru are totally unlike those in Venezuela, which occasioned a system breakdown and paved the way for Chávez’s rise to power in 1998. Peru’s economy has been booming like thunder for a decade and millions have been lifted out of poverty.

No fundamental reversal of the policies that produced this socio-economic change is at issue. Rather, an urgently needed debate over wealth distribution has been stimulated by Humala’s candidacy.

Peru’s economic boom has resulted in a substantial reduction of poverty.

Today about a third of the country is poor, down from half the country a decade ago. But growth has been concentrated in Lima and the coast. In the south and central highlands and in the Amazonian jungle, poverty remains high and a ‘wild west’ approach to natural resource extraction has intensified conflict.

Indigenous Aymara in the highland city of Puno have captured headlines in the midst of the election campaign with protests against plans by Bear Creek, a Canadian miner, to open a silver mine that protestors say would pollute Lake Titicaca. A combination of negative environmental side-effects and a struggle over economic rents generated from these activities could fuel another cycle of violence and repression.

These pressures raise questions about Peru’s political institutions, which are not as robust as those of Chile and Uruguay, for example, often praised as poster children for democracy in the region. But the sky is not falling. A major collapse that would create an environment fertile for a ‘salve patria’ mission is unlikely.

To make Chávez-like changes, Humala would need a huge coalition hungry for major political transformation. This he does not have.

Moreover, one of Chávez’s most vocal critics in the region, Mario Vargas Llosa, is now supporting Humala.

He and other liberal intellectuals, including his son Alvaro, could convince undecided moderate voters that a Keiko presidency would not be compatible with democracy.

Their support for Humala stems from two factors: Humala’s move to the center and pledge to respect Peru’s democratic rules; and the direct connection that exists between Keiko and her father Alberto Fujimori, the former president who wielded power ruthlessly and arbitrarily in the 1990s.

Keiko was part of her father’s government, if only as “first lady” (a stand-in role that she assumed after her mother was brutally mistreated by her father). She has not repudiated her father’s policies, and we suspect she would release him from prison where he is serving a 25 year sentence for corruption and crimes against humanity. In fact, her campaign appears to have been run, in part, out of the penitentiary where father Fujimori is incarcerated.

Critics say the very same dirty tricks he used to perpetuate himself in power have been used in her campaign.

When a journalist in one of two pro-Humala newspapers revealed that the Peruvian military intelligence service was engaged in dirty tricks to support her campaign, the editor received a funereal bouquet. Another newspaper that is more sympathetic to Humala was purchased on masse to prevent circulation in certain districts of Lima. Much of the media is heavily biased against Humala, abandoning any pretense to neutrality in news reporting.

If she pardoned her father and attacked the judges who put him behind bars there is a danger that the entire mafia that ran the judiciary and armed forces, and which was never entirely purged by previous governments, would be reactivated.

Then there is the key matter of powerful interests and checks and balances, the main reason she represents by far the greater danger to Peru’s democracy.

Keiko has few incentives to govern democratically, while Humala faces constraints that may force him to govern democratically.

She would govern with the collaboration of powerful de facto interests – big business, the media, the armed forces, the most socially conservative forces within the Catholic and evangelical churches, and much of the political establishment – which would be all too pleased to watch as she imposed a “mano dura” (or iron fist) on crime and dissent, applied band-aide solutions for poverty, and asked for kickbacks in exchange for continuing “open for business” economic policies.

Humala, on the other hand, would be hemmed in on every corner. A hostile business community, rabidly critical media, nervous armed force, and all the corrupt office holders in congress, the courts and the judiciary would do everything possible to keep him off balance. The only way for him to govern would be to take the higher ground and rule democratically, since the legitimacy of his right to rule would not be backed by Peru’s powerful private actors.

All this tells us that Peru has a long way to go before it becomes a stable democracy with good governance and laws. For these ‘democratic consolidation’ strides to be taken, powerful actors will have to lose power.

Convincing elites that such a recalibration is a positive sum game will be difficult. But if Peru’s elites were to look east, across the Andes to Brazil, they would find inspiration from an elite that learned a worker’s political party headed by a worker could be good for business, good for democracy, and good for the welfare of society.

As the region’s weathering of the Great Recession shows, the Latin American left can be quite good for domestic and international business. Indeed, these elections, beyond determining the future trajectory of Peru, hold major implications for the ‘growth with equity’ development model.

An Humala presidency would broaden the reach of that social democratic model. A Keiko presidency would damage democracy and pay lip service to equity while growing the fortunes of the rich even more.

The bigger danger is not that Humala would reveal himself to be a wolf in sheep’s skin. It is, we fear, that he would turn out be like Obama: that he would come to power and find himself able to do very little to address his country’s deeper structural problems.

Como actualización de este posteo, les tengo la traducción del artículo con una introducción de parte del diario La Primera:

Mucha atención empresarios y sectores conservadores que se creen el cuento de Fujimori y quienes la apoyan. Este artículo publicado con el título “Humala es mejor para la democracia en el Perú”, el 31 de mayo en el influyente diario londinense Financial Times, escrito por Max Cameron, experto en estudios sobre el Perú de la Universidad de British Columbia, y Michael McCarthy, de la Universidad de Johns Hopkins, afirma que la mejor opción, la más razonable y conveniente para el Perú es Ollanta Humala. Aquí sus razones. (La traducción es de LA PRIMERA y, por razones de espacio, se ha eliminado la parte introductoria).

Humala no gobernaría como Chávez, porque las condiciones en el Perú son totalmente distintas a las de Venezuela, las cuales ocasionaron una interrupción del sistema y abrieron el camino para el ascenso de Chávez al poder en 1998. La economía del Perú ha prosperado durante una década y millones han salido de la pobreza.

No está en disputa ningún vuelco fundamental en las políticas que produjeron ese cambio económico-social. Más bien, la candidatura de Humala ha estimulado un debate urgentemente necesario sobre distribución de la riqueza.

El auge económico del Perú ha conducido a una reducción sustancial de la pobreza. Hoy, cerca de un tercio de la población es pobre, la mitad de los que eran pobres hace una década. Pero el crecimiento se ha concentrado en Lima y en la costa. En la sierra del sur y del centro y en la selva amazónica la pobreza sigue siendo alta y el trato primitivo (“wild west”) en la extracción de los recursos naturales ha intensificado el conflicto.

Los indígenas aymaras de la ciudad altiplánica de Puno han ganado titulares en medio de la campaña electoral con su protesta contra los planes de Bear Creek, minera canadiense, de abrir una mina de plata que los protestatarios dicen que contaminaría el Lago Titicaca. Una combinación de efectos laterales negativos y la lucha respecto a las rentas económicas podría fomentar otro ciclo de violencia y represión.

Estas presiones plantean interrogantes acerca de las instituciones políticas del Perú, que no son tan robustas como las de Chile y Uruguay, por ejemplo, a menudo presentados como niños modelo de la democracia en la región. Pero el cielo no se está desplomando. Es improbable un colapso mayor que crearía ambiente fértil para una misión de “salvación de la patria”.

Para realizar cambios como los de Chávez, Humala necesitaría una enorme coalición sedienta de transformación política mayor. No tiene esto.

Más aún, uno de los más vehementes críticos de Chávez en la región, Mario Vargas Llosa, apoya ahora a Humala.

Él y otros intelectuales liberales, incluido su hijo Álvaro, podrían convencer a votantes moderados indecisos de que la presidencia de Keiko no sería compatible con la democracia. Este apoyo a Humala surge de dos factores: el paso de Humala al centro y el compromiso de éste de respetar las reglas democráticas; y la conexión directa que existe entre Keiko y su padre Alberto Fujimori, el expresidente que ejerció el poder despiadada y arbitrariamente en los años 1990.

Keiko fue parte del gobierno de su padre, aunque solo como “primera dama” (un rol sustitutorio que asumió cuando su madre fue brutalmente maltratada por su padre). Ella no ha repudiado las políticas de su padre, y sospechamos que lo liberaría de la prisión que cumple debido a una condena de 25 años por corrupción y crímenes contra la humanidad. De hecho, su campaña parece haber sido dirigida, en parte, desde la penitenciaría donde su padre está encarcelado.

Los críticos dicen que ella emplea en su campaña los mismos recursos sucios que él usó para perpetuarse en el poder.

Cuando un periodista de uno de los dos diarios pro Humala reveló que el servicio de inteligencia militar del Perú estaba involucrado en acciones turbias para apoyar la campaña de ella, el director recibió un aparato floral funerario. Otro diario simpatizante de Humala fue adquirido en masa para impedir su circulación en ciertos distritos de Lima. La mayoría de los medios está pesadamente sesgada contra Humala, abandonando toda pretensión de neutralidad en el manejo de las noticias.

Si ella perdonó a su padre y atacó a los jueces que lo colocaron tras las rejas, existe el peligro de que sea reactivada toda la mafia que actúa en el sistema judicial y en las Fuerzas Armadas, y que nunca fue enteramente purgada por gobiernos anteriores. Entonces es el problema clave de intereses poderosos y pesos y contrapesos, la principal razón para que ella represente el peligro mayor para la democracia en el Perú.

Keiko tiene pocos incentivos para gobernar democráticamente, mientras que Humala se enfrenta a constricciones que pueden forzarlo a gobernar democráticamente.

Ella gobernaría con la colaboración de poderosos intereses de facto –grandes empresas, los medios, las Fuerzas Armadas, las fuerzas socialmente más conservadoras dentro de las iglesias católica y evangélicas, y la mayoría de la clase dirigente– que vería con mucho agrado que ella impusiera mano dura contra el crimen y la disidencia, aplicara soluciones de bandas de curita para la pobreza y solicitara coimas a cambio de que continuaran las políticas económicas “abiertas para los negocios”.

Humala, por otra parte, encontraría obstáculos en cada esquina. Una comunidad de negocios hostil, medios rabiosamente críticos, fuerza armada nerviosa, y todos los corruptos soportes en el Congreso y el Poder Judicial harían todo lo posible por desestabilizarlo. La última manera que él tiene es asumir la actitud más elevada y administrar democráticamente, puesto que la legitimidad de su derecho a gobernar no sería respaldada por los poderosos actores privados del Perú.

Todo esto indica que el Perú tiene un largo camino por recorrer antes de que se convierta en una democracia estable con buenas leyes y gobernanza. Para que se den las zancadas hacia esta “consolidación democrática” poderosos actores tienen que perder poder.

Difícil será convencer a las elites de que tal recalibración es un juego de suma positiva. Pero si las elites peruanas miraran hacia el este, a través de los Andes, a Brasil, encontrarían inspiración en una elite que aprendió que un partido político de trabajadores, encabezado por un trabajador, puede ser bueno para los negocios, bueno para la democracia y bueno para el bienestar de la sociedad.

Como demostró la región al capear la gran Recesión, la izquierda de América Latina puede ser buena para los negocios domésticos e internacionales. En realidad, estas elecciones, aparte de determinar la trayectoria futura del Perú, tienen implicaciones mayores para el modelo de desarrollo de “crecimiento con equidad”.

Una presidencia de Humala ampliaría el alcance del modelo socialdemócrata. Una presidencia de Keiko dañaría la democracia y pagaría servicio de boquilla a la equidad mientras las fortunas de los ricos crecerían aún más.

El peligro mayor no es que Humala se revele como un lobo con piel de cordero. El peligro es, lo tememos, que resulte, como Obama: que llegue al poder y encuentre que es muy poco lo que es capaz de hacer para enfrentar los profundos problemas estructurales de su país.

LAS ELECCIONES MUNICIPALES DEL 2010. Por Maxwell Cameron

Siguiendo con los análisis sobre el reciente proceso electoral edil (del que todavía no tenemos los resultados finales oficiales), les presento la ponencia de Max Cameron, Profesor de Ciencias Politicas de la Universidad de British Columbia, Canadá, en la Conferencia de Latin American Studies Association (LASA) en Toronto, Canada, el dia 9 de octubre del 2010 (Foto: El Comercio).

Does the meteoric fall of Lourdes Flores Nano, and the equally improbable rise of Susana Villaran, suggest that Peru is falling in step with the left turns taken by some of its neighbors? After the election in 2006 it appeared that, from the perspective of Latin America’s left turns, Peru was the dog that did not bark – twice. First, Ollanta Humala lost the election and, second, Garcia chose to govern from the right. Was Peruvian soil so saturated in blood that, like Colombia and Mexico, voters would dare embrace neither the neovelasquismo of Humala nor the flotsam and jetsam of the once formidable but never really United Left? In that case, has Villaran finally overcome its Peru’s version of the Vietnam syndrome?

Or are we witnessing the birth of a new right and the transformation of an old left? Thanks to electoral incompetence and partisan suspicions, we still don’t know the final vote tally. The victory of Villaran is uncertain, but it is clear that Flores lost. She lost the big prize, the political high ground, and her way.

Read my lips: Lourdes Flores will never be president of Peru. After three strikes, she is out. In the presidential races of 2001, 2006, as in this contest, the same pattern was repeated: the early lead, the emergence or disappearance of a new candidate, a crisis, and then bitter defeat. In each case, a crucial faux pas: in 2001, her father hurled racist epithets at her contender; in 2006 she displayed her domestic employee to the media to show how she was like family; and now we have the poto-audio, the secretly recorded “up-yours audio tape” in which she deftly shoots the messenger, Alfredo Torres of the APOYO polling company, for shaving percentages off her support every week, and then says the municipal job, which she never wanted, can be shoved you-know-where.

The sentiment may have been understandable. She wanted to be president, but was pushed aside in favor of Luis Castaneda Lossio. The trouble is that the right couldn’t afford to let Lourdes shove the job. When Villaran walks into the municipality of Lima and opens the books the smell of marmalade will be overpowering. Why has it taken years to build bus lanes down the Via Expresa? Castaneda Lossio is widely criticized for being neither efficient nor transparent, and we can be sure that his pecadillos will be ventilated by the Villaran administration.

But what really sank the Flores campaign was the removal of Alex Kouri. As long as this notorious Montesinista was in the race the challenge for democratic voters was to coordinate votes to stop him. Once he was banned, Flores could not hold a candle to Villaran on matters of personal integrity or probity. So she went negative.

Villaran might be as innocuous as your favorite aunt, but Flores suggested that she was aligned with the darkest forces of Peruvian politics – drugs, violence, even the notorious Peru Support Group in England. A hyperventilating Fritz Du Bois suggested that brave men in red suspenders would faint at the sight of Susana in the municipality.

Yet who is Villaran? She is Alfonso Barrantes incarnate—Frijolita. It was said of Barrantes that he could take the ill-humor of Peru’s masses and give it a positive face. But Villaran is better, because she is a woman. She lacks the vanity, the male ego so prominent in the small man, that offen, as Max Weber said, causes politicians to lose their inner balance. Her regular recitations of the pray of Saint Francis also helps.

It is that inner balance that Flores lost in this race. She became the John McCain of Peruvian politics, and behind her stands a Peruvian Tea Party. Historically, the vulnerability of the right has been it’s social isolation: it lives in San Isidro and Miraflores, venturing into Chorillos for military service, and Lima Cercado to worship. Now, however, it has won in districts of Lima never before held, but at a price: its has recruited an unsavory collection of transfugas, operators and shady dealers.

Jaime Bayly was right when he said there is a modern, democratic right in Peru. “Soy yo.” Villaran represents a modern, democratic left. She, is like Barrantes, the engine of this train that pulls Peru’s left. The trouble is the engine has no boxcars behind it.

And so, as we look ahead to the presidential elections of 2011, what can we learn from this municipal contest? There is a Kouri-type figure in this campaign: Keiko Fujimori. The challenge will be to stop her. If Castaneda fizzles, then who will emerge to fight the good fight? Already, Alejandro Toledo is donning his armor and mounting his steed. Surely not, you say! Wasn’t his approval in the single digits in the final years of his last term? But there is a precedent in Peru for disastrous leaders coming back for another term: the current president. Déjà vu, all over again.