The Devil's Excrement

With 77% of the vote counted, ONPE, the Peruvian Electoral Board is saying that Allan Garcia is leading Ollanta Humala by 55.48% to 44.58% according to one of my favorite Peruvian bloggers Inka. You have to love bloggers, Inka gave us the story before the conventional news sources!

I was away at a company training course outisde Caracas, at a beautiful place with no Internet connection, this weekend and just as I was about to post this Editorial from the Washington Post in its entirety, Pedro sends its text, indicating I had the right idea. It speaks for itself:

A Latin Backlash from the Washington Post

Hugo Chavez has managed to replace George W. Bush as the imperialist specter.

For years Hugo Chavez’s steady dismantlement of Venezuela’s democracy and
his embrace of dictators and terrorists around the world — from Fidel
Castro to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad — prompted next to no reaction from
Latin America’s democratic governments. The silence was shameful,
partly because Venezuela’s former leaders fought for human rights in
countries such as Chile, Peru and Argentina during the 1980s and ’90s,
but also because the quiet was in part purchased by Mr. Chavez, who
lavished subsidized oil and lucrative trade deals on governments around
the region.

Now at last, Mr. Chavez is the object of a growing
backlash from leaders around Latin America — from Brazil, Peru,
Colombia, Mexico and Nicaragua, among other countries. In part, the
politicians are responding to foolish overreaching by Mr. Chavez, who
has been busy trying to turn Bolivia into a satellite state while
suggesting he has similar plans for much of the rest of the continent.
Latin Americans don’t like imperialism, whether it comes from
Washington or Caracas. And even leftist leaders, like those who rule in
Brazil and elsewhere in South America, find it hard to imagine
themselves prospering in a Venezuela-led economic bloc that includes
Cuba but shuns the United States.

The other reason Latins have
found their anti-Chavez tongues is delightfully pragmatic: It’s a
proven vote-getter. Elections are taking place or are on the way in a
host of Central and South American countries — and politicians in most
of them are finding that linking their opponents to Venezuela’s
demagogue works wonders. The biggest beneficiary may be Peru’s Alan
Garcia, who is the front-runner in Sunday’s presidential election
runoff. Mr. Garcia is himself a leftist populist who two decades ago
presided over one of the most disastrously incompetent governments in
Peruvian history. But his opponent, a former military coup-plotter
named Ollanta Humala, has been endorsed by Mr. Chavez, and Mr. Garcia
has focused his campaign on that point, saying only he can prevent Peru
from becoming “a colony of Venezuela.” It’s a logical strategy: Mr.
Chavez’s approval rating in Peru is 17 percent.<!–
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In Mexico,\ncommentators concluded several months ago that the poll lead of leftist\nAndres Manuel Lopez Obrador in July\’s presidential election could not\nbe overcome. But that was before Mr. Lopez Obrador\’s right-wing\nchallenger, Felipe Calderon, began running television advertisements\nconnecting Mr. Chavez to his opponent; the polls now show that Mr.\nCalderon has taken the lead. In neighboring Nicaragua, Sandinista\nleader and presidential candidate Daniel Ortega is also suffering from\nMr. Chavez\’s poisoned kiss.

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The Bush administration, which has\nhaplessly allowed Mr. Chavez to exploit the U.S. president as a\npolitical foil for years, has hit on just the right response as it has\nwatched Peruvians and Mexicans turn the tables on the Venezuelan: It\nhas kept quiet. The sight of Latin Americans rising up in defense of\ndemocratic values, and against the attempt of a would-be regional\nhegemonist to subvert them, is inspiring — and it requires nothing\nfrom Washington save discreet applause.

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