Ollanta Humala, the former army officer and populist-nationalist who leads in the run-up to Sunday's presidential election in Peru, says he wants to construct "a Latin American family" of like-minded peoples and governments. That has triggered fears in Washington that Peru could soon join Hugo Chavez's Venezuela, Evo Morales' Bolivia and Fidel Castro's Cuba in an anti-US, or at least anti-Bush administration, radical front.
But if he is to achieve his ambition, Humala will have to sort out his own extraordinary family first. His brother, Antauro, is in jail after leading a bloody insurrection last year against President Alejandro Toledo. In a recently broadcast tape, Antauro apparently demanded that Toledo and the entire Peruvian Congress be executed by firing squad for treason.
Humala's father, Isaac, founded an ultra-nationalist movement, Etnocacerismo, that stressed the racial superiority of "copper-colored" Indian and mixed-blood mestizos over lighter-skinned Peruvians of Spanish descent. His mother suggested gay men should be shot to end "immorality in the streets." Another brother, Ulises, is running against him in Sunday's election.
Humala, whose first name means "warrior who sees all," also faces persistent questions about his own democratic credentials. He previously supported Etnocacerismo and, like Chavez, he launched a failed coup, in his case against the now disgraced president Alberto Fujimori in 2000. He has been accused of human-rights abuses when he commanded a remote army base during the Shining Path Maoist insurgency in the 1990s -- charges he denies.
And although he insists he is not anti-American, his stated admiration for General Juan Velasco -- who ran Peru in a dictatorship from 1968-1975, nationalized industries and snuffed out independent media -- has increased worries about a return to the age of the authoritarian caudillo and anti-market policies. Where Velasco courted the Soviet Union, Humala might look to China.
"We must impose discipline, we must bring order to the country," Humala told a rally in Lima.
If elected, he pledged (again like Chavez, who has controversially endorsed him) to rewrite the Constitution, industrialize coca production, cancel a free-trade pact with the US and increase state control of the important mining sector.
"Our motherland is not for sale," he said.
But these and other efforts to present himself, the child of a privileged upbringing, as a champion of the oppressed in a country where about half the population lives on US$1.25 a day or less have prompted accusations of opportunism and worse.
"Maintain democracy or go to dictatorship: that is what is at stake in these elections," the novelist Mario Vargas Llosa said.
Lima's political establishment and media mostly feel the same way; so do the traditional leftwing parties that oppose Humala. But surveys suggest professional politicians are almost universally despised as self-serving. This context helps explain the apparent popularity of Humala, who has not previously run for office, according to John Crabtree of the Centre for Latin American Studies at Oxford University.
"Humala could be expected to draw support from those dissatisfied with the political system and those who feel they have received little benefit from years of buoyant economic growth," Crabtree wrote in World Today magazine.
Unemployment and insecurity, typified by low incomes, a widening wealth gap, high urban crime, drug trafficking and a lingering rural threat posed by leftwing extremists, were key issues.
The most likely electoral antidote to Humala, and to US fears of another destabilizing regional lurch into pseudo-revolutionary populism, is Lourdes Flores Nano, a pro-business former congresswoman who has increasingly espoused social reform. Commentators say her gender may prove a positive point among female voters fed up with bossy, macho men who fail to deliver.
The last survey before the vote showed Flores five points behind Humala, with 26 percent support, but likely to triumph in a second round if (as seems probable) neither wins outright on Sunday. Such an outcome would echo the recent groundbreaking presidential victory in Chile of the New Labour-style moderate Michelle Bachelet.
In a recently published interview, Julia Sweig of the US Council on Foreign Relations suggested the current political volatility across Latin America was socially rather than ideologically inspired.
It reflected a lack of confidence in "existing institutions and traditional elites," rather than a desire for revolution. But in badly governed, alienated and angry Peru, that could amount thing.
"The division in this country is not right versus left," Humala said. "It's the business elite against the rest."
Because much of what former US president Donald Trump says is unhinged and histrionic, it is tempting to dismiss all of it as bunk. Yet the potential future president has a populist knack for sounding alarums that resonate with the zeitgeist — for example, with growing anxiety about World War III and nuclear Armageddon. “We’re a failing nation,” Trump ranted during his US presidential debate against US Vice President Kamala Harris in one particularly meandering answer (the one that also recycled urban myths about immigrants eating cats). “And what, what’s going on here, you’re going to end up in World War
Earlier this month in Newsweek, President William Lai (賴清德) challenged the People’s Republic of China (PRC) to retake the territories lost to Russia in the 19th century rather than invade Taiwan. He stated: “If it is for the sake of territorial integrity, why doesn’t [the PRC] take back the lands occupied by Russia that were signed over in the treaty of Aigun?” This was a brilliant political move to finally state openly what many Chinese in both China and Taiwan have long been thinking about the lost territories in the Russian far east: The Russian far east should be “theirs.” Granted, Lai issued
On Sept. 2, Elbridge Colby, former deputy assistant secretary of defense for strategy and force development, wrote an article for the Wall Street Journal called “The US and Taiwan Must Change Course” that defends his position that the US and Taiwan are not doing enough to deter the People’s Republic of China (PRC) from taking Taiwan. Colby is correct, of course: the US and Taiwan need to do a lot more or the PRC will invade Taiwan like Russia did against Ukraine. The US and Taiwan have failed to prepare properly to deter war. The blame must fall on politicians and policymakers
Gogoro Inc was once a rising star and a would-be unicorn in the years prior to its debut on the NASDAQ in 2022, as its environmentally friendly technology and stylish design attracted local young people. The electric scooter and battery swapping services provider is bracing for a major personnel shakeup following the abrupt resignation on Friday of founding chairman Horace Luke (陸學森) as chief executive officer. Luke’s departure indicates that Gogoro is sinking into the trough of unicorn disillusionment, with the company grappling with poor financial performance amid a slowdown in demand at home and setbacks in overseas expansions. About 95