President Twobreakfasts gave an interview to Peru's El Comercio daily this week as part of the general fanfare for the APEC conference. The local media all picked up on Alan saying he'd like to be President for a third time in 2016 (he can't run again in 2011), but Jurgen Schuldt over at memorias de gregorio samsa* has an altogether keener eye for a quote.
Schuldt spotted this one before I saw it mentioned anywhere else, and it really does sum up just how arrogant, mediocre and even dangerous Peru's Prez truly is. The subject was how Peruvians are never happy (Alan had already blamed his low approval rating on this...how convenient). The example was the large port facility being built at present in Callao, just North of Lima. The talk was how the people of Peru will find any excuse to complain about the development (the fact that Chilean money is building the port and not capital from Peru grates amongst the population). Under the scalpel of the OttoTrans Alan said:
"There is a lot of doubletalk. Peru has to free itself of these complainers and the best it could do is put all these people that speak through bitterness, envy or personal frustration in a boat and set it sailing and lose them (forever)."
That's Twobreakfasts down to a tee. He has no idea how much damage his lying and deception is causing his country, and anyone who stands up to his arrogance should be disappeared. And here lies a point that the reader unversed with LatAm culture and psyche often misses, but live here for a while and that soon changes.
The idea of "losing someone" in the way Alan theorizes is not just a metaphor in Latin America, dear reader. The word "desaparecido" (disappeared) is feared and reviled from Tijuana to Tierra del Fuego, and anyone with even a rough sense of regional modern history knows that it's no laughing matter. Speak to the family of a disappeared and you'll never laugh about it again, I assure you. No matter where, no matter if the regime were left, right, centre, revolutionary, military or (proclaiming to be) democratic. Chile, Argentina, Peru, Brazil, Colombia, and all the et ceteras.
But Alan García, the man who dragged Peru into the depths of economic and social chaos in the 1980s, still dreams of "losing" anyone that opposes him. The man is a danger to society, make no mistake. Under all that neoliberal, investor-friendly image that sits so well with the industrialized nations there's a really nasty piece of work. The English media sometimes muses about the apparent paradox of a country with great economic numbers having the President with the lowest regional approval rating (right now, measured at 19%....and remember 15% of those are the die-hard APRA party faithful who'd approve of Pol-Pot if he were the head of their organization). Those 'regional experts' that puzzle over this paradox don't know what they are talking about. Very simple.
The basic premise that world opinion is a better judge of a Peruvian president than the Peruvian people themselves is bordering on an insult. Think about it this way and ask yourself a couple of logical questions:
- What would Alan's approval rating be if the country hadn't been lucky to enjoy the high metals prices over the last two years?
- Have you noticed that those metals prices have recently dried up?
- How will Twobreakfasts react when his back is up against the wall economically?
The 19% approval rating isn't some statistical fluke. Vox populi dixit. Are you listening?
*after a year traipsing around the blogosphere, I still think this is the best name for a blog I've found