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Ollanta Humala as "a firebrand populist" (by far the winner of the primary with 30.9 % of the vote in a large field). It's actually an Agence France Presse article. Bakutoday is some sort of news service connected to Azerbaijan that prints others' articles and has no "about us" link. AFP is like the BBC. While they are not the war profiteers, war propagandists and Bush ass-kissers that, say, the New York Times, the Washington Post and AP are, their neutrality in the face of the Bush junta and the last gasps of fascism in "the free world" is sometimes irritating. (Note: I have absolutely no idea of what the politics in Azerbaijan are. AFP is, of course, French.)
Lower down in the article, AFP gives a bit more about who's who is Peru:
"Garcia has spent much of his campaign trying to convince voters he has learned from past mistakes since his 1985-1990 administration, which was plagued by hyperinflation, rampant corruption and clashes with international financial institutions.
"Flores, 46, has battled claims she represents only wealthy Peruvians. She has already made two unsuccessful bids for the presidency.
"Humala has claimed his rivals represent more of the same in a country where about half the population lives in poverty and often feel they have not benefited from the years of economic growth."
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Those are fair description of Garcia and Flores. But Humala is much more than a "firebrand populist" and an advocate of the poor. He is an indigenous Indian, allied with Evo Morales next door in Bolivia--Bolivia's first indigenous president, elected on a wave of grass roots activism against Bechtel Corporation (which privatized the water in one Bolivian city, jacked up the prices to the poor--even trying to charge poor peasants for collecting rainwater!--and got thrown out of Bolivia). Humala and Morales both oppose the murderous U.S. "war on drugs," and are part of the leftist/socialist movement that has swept Latin America over the last several years--in Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Venezuela, Chile, Bolivia and now Peru--a movement that will likely see the leftist mayor of Mexico City elected president of Mexico this year. These governments have common themes--self-determination, independence from the U.S./World Bank/IMF, and justice for workers and the poor.
Garcia is part of the exploitative class, which has raked profits off the top, and left Peru's vast poor and indigenous population in a state of deep poverty. Flores is typical of what the Latin American left calls "neo-liberalism." It's something like Reaganism (and to some extent Clintonism): just let business have its way and prosperity will "trickle down" to the poor. The trouble is that "business" is no longer just trade and products; it is gigantic global corporate predators, with loyalty to no one, who roam the globe for cheap labor and opportunities to destroy local markets and grab control of resources. They are also heavily involved in war profiteering. To global corporations, people are just slave labor or cannon fodder. Local rich elites like those in Peru, Venezuela and Argentina let these predators into their countries, and are enriched by them, while the rest of the country lives in poverty, loses control of its resources, and even loses vital capabilities, such a country's ability to feed itself (often due to big U.S. ag dumping ag products on their markets at cheap prices--much the way Wal-Mart destroys local neighborhood businesses and downtown areas). The evildoers are most often U.S.-based global corporate predators, backed by the U.S. government, which has trained death squads to literally eliminate the left in these countries, and has poured U.S. money and intelligence/military/police resources into the countries in support of fascist dictators, and to prevent majority rule (ahem...democracy), often under the guise of the U.S. "war on drugs."
In the Bolivia/Peru region, what appears to be happening is a revolt against that violent U.S. interference. Morales, for instance, campaigned with a wreath of coca leaves around his neck. He is a poor indigenous coca leaf grower himself. The coca leaf is a sacred plant in the Andes, essential to survival in those high frigid altitudes. When he won the Bolivian election, ten thousand Andes Indians came down out of the mountains to invest him in office in their own beautiful ceremony, prior to his official inauguration.
What Morales said of Humala's campaign for president in neighboring Peru is this: "The time of the people has come."
Those words sent thrills through my soul: "The time of the people has come."
Imagine!
It's quite interesting to me how election reform, and close monitoring of elections--for instance, by the OAS, which has been very active on the matter of honest elections--has changed the color of South America in particular, and has helped establish democracy in countries with truly horrible histories of U.S. interference, and even bloodbaths at the hands of U.S.-supported dictators. To me, it means that it IS possible to recover from fascist government and to restore democracy. If the Latin Americans can do it, so can we!
TRANSPARENT elections = democracy and good government.
NON-TRANSPARENT elections run by rightwing Bushite corporations using "trade secret" proprietary programming code in electronc voting systems designed by the Bushite crooks in Congress = you know what.
U.S. voters, take note!
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"The time of the people has come."
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