Humala Headed to Victory in Peru Election, Quick Count Says

Nobody said they are angels, but they are anti-communists, not communists. Humala is a communist.

It was stated that the choice between the two was comparable to making a choice between 'AIDS or cancer.' Keiko Fujimori not only ran a weird (and scary to those with memories of her father) campaign, but more importantly the associations with her father did not do much to help her. Humala is a Chavist who will almost definitely not do Peru much good, however Keiko is not a 'rightwing conservative' by any measure (in the American sense of the word).

The quote about the choice between the two being tantamount to a choice between AIDS and cancer was from a native Peruvian who now lives in Europe (full bio: Daniel Hannan is a writer and journalist, and has been Conservative MEP for South East England since 1999. He speaks French and Spanish and loves Europe, but believes that the European Union is making its constituent nations poorer, less democratic and less free). I am attaching an excerpt of part of his article below (which was also posted on FR), and it can be seen that he is really against Humala and the thuggish future that he bodes, but he also does not think that Keiko Fujimori is a 'rightwing conservative' (whatever that means, which is key when looking at the political spectrum in other nations where the meaning of a phrase per American diction can be totally incongruent with the same word in a divergent political environment). The quote of AIDS/cancer is by Mario Vargas Llosa, a former leftist who converted to free-market conservatism (with that phrase having the same connotation as it does in the US, with Llosa annoying all sorts of leftists with his advocacy for property rights, open markets, and even risking quite a lot opposing then president Garcia's plan to nationalize banks ....quite different from Keiko Fujimori's 'rightwing conservatism,' which is the creation of a police state that brought to many Peruvians memories of her father autocratric dictatorship and human rights issues).

It was a bad choice, and while I personally would have prefered Fujimori (as does the Peruvian capital markets based on the market's reaction) it was a bad choice, with one person being a rabid dog, and the other a copperhead in your rucksack. Sure, one option (Fujimori ...the daughter) is better, it is not necessarily the best of choices.

Here is the excerpt:

First it was Venezuela, then Bolivia, then Ecuador, then Nicaragua. Now it’s my native Peru. One by one, largely unremarked here, Latin America’s nations are turning to the authoritarian Left. Ollanta Humala, who won yesterday’s presidential run-off, is typical of the breed of modern caudillo. A cashiered former army officer, he had concocted an angry and aggrieved programme which mingled ethnic nationalism, hostility to private enterprise, nostalgia for pre-Columbian times and anti-Chilean revanchism. His hero is Juan Velasco, the socialist general who seized power in a putsch in 1968, and promptly set about reducing Peru to a condition of penury from which it has only recently recovered. (One of my first memories is of the land invasions and mob violence of that baleful era.) Humala’s opponent in the run-off was Keiko Fujimori, daughter of the man who, as president in the 1990s, closed down Congress and gave himself autocratic powers, and who is now serving 25 years for human rights abuses. Mario Vargas Llosa saw it as a choice between two illiberal extremes – or, as he graphically put it, “between AIDS and cancer”. He voted, reluctantly and fearfully, for Humala. Humala, who used to boast of his closeness to Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez, now says he has moderated his views, and I hope to God he means it. Look at the other Chavists who have seized power in the neighbourhood, such as Bolivia’s Evo Morales and Ecuador’s Rafael Correa. They may not be exactly anti-democratic, but they are certainly anti-parliamentary; Bonapartists, if you like. Having got themselves more or less fairly elected, they promptly set about dismantling every constraint on their power: the national assembly, the electoral commission, the supreme court, independent media, business associations. In order to maintain their popularity, they keep picking fights – with Washington, with the IMF or, when all else fails, with each other.

Saying Keiko Fujimori is a 'rightwing conservative' is inaccurate. I saw in your latter posts you changed it to saying she is anti-communist (like her father). That is now correct, and a clear distinction between Humala who is a chavist. However being an anti-communist doesn't make one a rightwing conservative, especially when one is an anti-communist fascist. Both were poor choices, and the rabid dog won unfortunately (unfortunately, because at least an adult human being can survive a Copperhead's bite with proper medical care and some antivenin, while the rabid dog's bite, if untreated for long enough, would be 100% lethal).

Sarah Palin is an anti-communist rightwing conservative. Keiko Fujimori is an anti-communist fascist.

Thank you, Spetz, for your input.

Leftists always call their enemies fascist. In fact Humala is the leftist and the fascist, and Fujimori is not.

Does she support nationalization like Humala? She's been called a communist, a fascist, AIDS, and a snake, but I haven't heard any substantive criticism of her positions. Libertarian is not conservatism. Llosa sounds like Ralph Nader telling me there' no difference between the Democrat and Republican Party.

Fujimori's father saved Peru from Maoist communism. He's not a fascist. He's a hero. He should be pardoned.

If he is a hero, then why should he be pardoned? The charges must have been fake, right? He was a holy 'rightwing conservative' as well who did nothing wrong, and the actions of the Grupo Colina death squads must have 'misinterpreted' his directions. The various massacres, some of which involved the killing of children, were also manufactured lies against this hero of heroes who can do no wrong. So was the forced sterilisation of several hundred thousand women.

The difference between me and you TGJ when it comes to communism is as follows ....you believe communism is an absolute evil, and that anything that is against it therefore must be good and embraced. I, on the other hand, also believe that communism is an absolute evil, but I am not myopic enough to accept that anything against it must be good and embraced. Sometimes you have two evils, one absolute and one not-so-bad-but-still-not-kosher (which is why I stated before that while I would have wanted Keiko to win for market-based reason since some of my PE Funds are SA focused, I did not necessarily think that she was Mary Immaculate or anything close). There are many shades of gray, and just because Stalin is a b@$stard with his own spot of honor in Hades doesn't mean that Hitler helps Saint Pete with the keys to the Pearly Gates.

You might as well call George W. Bush a fascist who sent "death squads" to kill innocent children in Haditha and make human pyramids at Abu Ghraib.

Fujimori fought a war against communism and he won. That's why he's hated and that's why he's unjustly imprisoned.

Now we will see a resurgence of Sendero Luminoso, and Peru will be desperate for a Fujimori to save them again.