“Another One Bites the Dust”

Will Peru Maintain its March Towards Democracy and Free Market Reform?  Doubtful.

Just a few days ago, the South American nation of Peru had its presidential election.  There were a number of really great, moderate capitalists in the running.  Pedro Kuczynski, an economist who has graduated from Oxford and Princeton, former president Alejandro Toledo who holds a Ph.D. from Stanford, and Luis Castaneda Lossio, the former mayor of Lima.  However because of the large gap between the wealthy and the poor in Peru, two extreme candidates emerged, and were victorious in what amounts to a close tie, which will be decided in a run-off election in June.  

Ollanta Humala, a leftist radical disguised in a suit is a former army officer and coup plotter; he came in slightly ahead of the second runner up.  Ollanta Humala, rose from the dead due to a huge injection of petrodollars sent to his campaign by his mentor, the tyrant of Venezuela, Hugo Chávez; Due to this injection of communist cash, Humala now enjoys a comfortable lead in the polls.  Humala has little governing experience and possesses no political philosophy to speak of.  His father is a bona fide communist has worked to free all imprisoned communist/guerilla terrorists, and his mother believes that all homosexuals should be shot.  His brother has been convicted of kidnapping and murder.  

Keiko Fujimori, the daughter of Alberto Fujimori, the former president who is now in prison for the crimes committed during his regime is facing off against Humala in June. Dennis Jett from the Miami Herald states:  “It would be like Tricia Nixon running for president at age 35, if her father had received the jail time he deserved, with a program that consisted of nothing more than pardoning him.” Full Miami Herald article

Jett goes on to write: “Humala will probably win in June and then start rewriting the constitution to permit his immediate reelection. That will require a majority in Congress, which he can obtain by letting Fujimori out of jail and thereby gaining the support of his followers.”

So why should we care who wins this contest in the United States?  A blogger from RedState (Castor) correctly illustrates: “If Humala wins in Perú it would be a huge victory for Hugo Chávez as his puppet, Humala would become a sort of viceroy for him on the style of Bolivia´s Eva Morales. The anti-Americanism of Humala´s so-called Nationalist party along with Patría Roja, Sutep and other extremist Marxist groups will color his government´s every act and the narcos will  take heart. While Obama fiddles with Libya ,Perú can burn. If the supporters of the other 3 candidates will rally round whichever of them opposes Humala, then the leftist will lose, if not, Chávez wins and Perú and the USA lose big.”