Who Lost Peru?

It is the question that anyone with even a whiff of interest of what happens in the Western Hemisphere is asking these days, not the circus sideshow about some congressman named Weiner. Of two recent articles I came across concerning the recent presidential election there, The Guardian was, I believe, unrealistically optimistic...

"With almost all votes from Sunday's poll counted, [Leftist, Ollanta] Humala had won 7,182,788 and his rival Keiko Fujimori 6,807,933, translating into 51.3% and 48.7% respectively after a bitter campaign that polarised the country....

Big business and media groups backed the 36-year-old senator despite the fact that her [Keiko Fujimori's], father, Alberto, is in jail for corruption and human rights abuses committed while he was president in the 1990s. Humala, who led an unsuccessful coup against Fujimori in 2000, pulled ahead in the final days of the campaign after reminding voters of forced sterilisations and rampant corruption during Fujimori's rule. His victory sent the stock exchange plunging 12%, prompting temporary suspension of trading and fears of capital flight. Investors fear the former lieutenant colonel may follow radical economic policies of his one-time mentor, Venezuela's Hugo Chávez.

Humala renounced Chávez during the campaign, swapped red T-shirts for dark suits and promised to rule like a Lula-style social democrat. But doubts remain.

"We believe there is still a significant amount of uncertainty regarding who is the 'real' Humala," said a research note from RBC Capital Markets.

Humala and Fujimori are reviled by many Peruvians as dangerous demagogues but centrist rivals cancelled each other in the first round in April, putting the two populists from opposite ends of the political spectrum into the runoff."

And that's the more optimistic of the two articles. Talk about a couple of 'Real Winners' to choose from. They make a couple of flim-flam artists like Obama-McCain look like Lincoln-Douglas in comparison. From Red State, we read....

"The tremendous flow of money ,introduced into the coffers of Humala by Hugo Chávez enabled him to outspend Keiko by at least 4 to 1. This was known to the CIA and neither was denounced ,nor competing funds distributed to the pro-USA Keiko Fujimori.Three days before the election it took Roger Noriega,ex assistant secretary of state in the Bush administration , and long out of govertnment to publish the news that at least 12 million dollars were channeled through the Venezuelan Naval attache´s office in Bolivia to the naval attache´s office in Perú in the closing weeks of the campaign. A considerable amount of this money was used in vote buying in rural areas of southern Perú. During the years between elections, Chávez built up a treasure chest of petro-dollars in Perú to enable Humala to structure a formidable political party organization. He paid for key Brazilian operatives from Lula´s Brazilian labor party to organize Humala´s campaign.This was known in the state department and the CIA. No action was taken to help our friends.

So now the keystone, Perú is gone leaving Chile and Colombia without a key ally in their democratic front against Hugo Chávez. When Humala takes office on the 28th of July to the applause of Chávez, Evo Morales, Rafael Correa and the Castro brothers , he should issue a special thank you to the firm of Obama & Clinton Inc. for standing idly bye while Perú was lost."

It's not like we couldnt use friends in that part of the world when Iran is actively setting up missle batteries in Venezuela, pointed at the US and Colombia.

If only we had someone in the White House who knew how to counteract against such threats instead of the "community organizer" that currently occupies the Oval Office.

(Pictured; The Tomb of San Martin de Porres, Convent of Santo Domingo, Lima, Peru