Susana Villarán

It took an embarrassing 23 days while the sore losing righty Lourdes Flores, backed up by outgoing mayor Luis Castañeda, President Twobreakfasts and all the darker powers of the Lima elite tried their hardest to stop the popular ballot box vote from being counted correctly by (supposedly neutral) ONPE voting office of Peru, but just a couple of minutes ago the sore loser Lourdes (still moaning in her speech today that her dirty tricks didn't work) conceded defeat and Lima has its new Mayor, Susana Villarán of centre-left Fuerza Social.

A good day for democracy. To know more about Susana, check out the interview IKN did with the new Mayor once upon a time.

Reactionaries lose money

So I get this mail today from some dude worried that "The Communists are going to win in Peru" this Sunday. By this he was referring to the rise of Susana Villarán in the election for the Mayor of Lima, now firm favourite to get the job after polls show her with a lead of up to 12 points (40 to 28 vs main rival Lourdes Flores).

It made me reflect on just how ignorant people are. Villarán is no communist, she hates the Chávez regime, she's one of the few that stood up to the totalitarianism of Fujimori in the 1990's and was a minister in the highly successful transition government of Valentin Paniagua in the early part of this decade when Fujimori fell from grace. But because some media channel or other has decided that Lourdes Flores (centre right) is their gal, Villarán (centre left and not an inch further left than that) gets lumped in with the goddam pinko commies to scare the crap out of people who just can't be bothered to look beyond the headlines. The person who mailed me wanted to know whether selling Fortuna Silver (FVI.to) was the right thing to do cos of this new and evil Commie threat! No matter that FVI operates over a thousand Kms from Lima, no matter that the price of silver is far more influence than local politics, no matter that Villarán has declared herself and her party 100% pro-business....better to swallow the bullshit spin and hype, isn't it? It's no wonder the  ignorant and uninformed lose so much money in the markets every year.

And then this Guardian article below hit my screen. Not Peru but Brazil (and with today's best photo included), the connection was still clear enough. Read it yourself and see what I mean, because it also applied when the investment community got scared of 'Chelle Bachelet in Chile a few years ago and said her Commie background would ruin everything. Right wingers really like reminding us all how freakin' dumb they are, don't they? 

For years "Lula" was a dirty word at Brazil's main stock exchange, the Bovespa in São Paulo. The mere mention of the fact that Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, former union-leader and once a ferocious anti-capitalist, had his eyes on the presidency was enough to send shivers through international markets. In the lead up to Lula's historic 2002 election, Brazil's currency plummeted as overseas investors fretted over what the country's first working-class president might do to their balance sheets.

Times have changed – and Lula knows it. "Ten years ago I'd walk past the [stock exchange's] front door and people would shake with fear. They'd say, 'Where is that capitalist-eater going?" Lula joked last Friday, as he returned to the Bovespa to unveil the largest share offer in world history: the sale of $70bn (£45bn) worth of shares in the Brazilian energy group Petrobras. CONTINUES HERE

Chart of the day is.....

...an update of the race to be Mayor of Lima Peru, the main event in the Municipal elections coming up on October 3rd:

Since we last noted this race on August 13th, the then-2nd placed candidate Alex Kouri has been barred by the Peruvian election authorities from running because 1) he's a dumbass and 2) he wasn't a resident of the City of Lima. So with the field narrowed down we see the race developing into a woman vs woman contest (and this is good). Lourdes Flores (right wing) is still in the lead but Susana Villaran (centre-left) is closing in and making a real fight of it. In July Susana was polling 4%,  in early August 7.5%, now 21.7%. There's still a big gap to make up, but the trend is her friend. and it'll likely be much closer come the big day.

By the way, the August 16th numbers were those from the same IMA pollsters and they assumed Kouri would be barred, so it's a fair comparative. Data from the survey results here.

Final thought: If you're asking why you should care about a city Mayorial election in a South American country, it's a fair question of course. So the answer is

1) It's excellent news that two women are fighting out the top position and most likely the job itself. Good for South American politics, good for all of us to have women in power seats.

2) This election, especially the Lima vote, will set the scene for next year's big shebang Presidentials in Peru. Flores is rightwing, Villaran is centreleft (though her opponents are trying to paint her as more radical. Big clues to how 2011 will go, coming soon.

3) If 1) and 2) aren't enough for you then that's still fine by me, but perhaps you should ask yourself just why you're reading a blog about LatAm written by some dumbass South of the equator in the first place.

Have. Nice. Day.


UPDATE: Another reliable polling company publishes this morning and puts Lourdes on 33% and Susana on 27%. Spanish language link here.

Susana Villarán on Peru's New PM, Yehude Simon

Susana Villarán and Yehude Simon

Susana Villarán is an IKN blogfriend (check out the interview we did here) and an all round good egg. So it's good to see her interviewed tonight by El Comercio, Peru's newspaper of record, on the appointment of Yehude Simon as Cabinet Chief and new Prime Minister.

The interview is linked here for you Spanish speakers, and below is the full text in OttoTranslation. Well worth reading to see how things might change in the Peruvian scene (though I have to say I'm more pessimistic than Villarán after watching 10 of the "resigned" ministers get their jobs back yesterday, even though Simon today said that two or three of them won't make it to Christmas).

Here's the translation of the Villarán interview. Enjoy.

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Simon Is One of the New Leaders of the Democratic and Modern Left

The ex-Minister of Women and Social Development, Susana Villarán, today said that the new Head of Ministers, Yehude Simon, will ad more weight to the fight against poverty, and was confident that this politician has become one of the new leaders of the new, modern left-wing of Peru.

"We greet Simon as new Prime Minister. He is a decentralizer and we believe that with him (in charge) this issue will be important in the government agenda. Simon will also add great weight in the issue of the fight against poverty and exclusion", Villarán told elcomercio.com.pe.

She laso said that other issues that must be tackled by debates in this government are the eradication of extreme poverty, the absence of political manipulation in social programs as well as the unrestricted respect for human rights.

She emphasized that before the resignation of ex-premier Jorge Del Castillo, the government had not looked for multi-sector agreement to fight poverty, but had rather looked to politicize social programs. "This is very dangerous", she commented.

Villarán said that inside the new democratic left Simon had taken a role of leader, alongside other figures such as Vladimiro Huaroc (president of the Junín region) or Jesús Coronel (president of the Cajamarca region). "It's good that the democratic left is not lacking leadership", she said.

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Related Post
An interview with Susana Villarán

Other Sites
Link to Susana Villarán's blog