Posted on 06/06/2011 5:59:55 PM PDT by Kaslin
Elections: For years, Peru has been Latin America's top-performing economy, leading the pack on GDP, inflation, poverty eradication, free trade and markets. So why did Peru's voters suddenly elect a communist?
Markets plummeted in Peru on Monday after leftist Ollanta Humala won Peru's presidency with nearly 51% of the vote. Stocks on the Lima exchange fell 13% at last glance, their biggest one-day drop since records began in 1990. Bonds and the currency were down, too.
It was painful because Peru had been the brightest light among Latin America's economies. Embracing markets over two decades had paid off handsomely for Peru. Last year, the Andean state posted 7% GDP growth, the highest in its region; and 2.7% inflation, the lowest. Per capita GDP had risen to $9,330, and the poverty rate had dropped to 30%.
Peru didn't just have "Asian-tigerlike numbers," as Latin Business Chronicle Executive Editor Joachim Bamrud told IBD, it also outperformed its Latin American rivals like an industry leader. During the 2009 economic crisis, when investment fell 40% across the region, Peru's foreign investment rose 28% to $6.2 billion. At a time when average GDP in the region fell 1.8%, Peru's grew 0.9%.
So what made voters in such an enviably growing country want to elect someone like Humala?
(Excerpt) Read more at investors.com ...
Without reading the article I’m guessing an appeal to tribal loyalties much like those in Bolivia.
With the election of Barack Obama, nothing should be surprising.
Communism is all about breaking this commandment.
Peru's Humala voters, known as the resentidos, resented the success of others even as the benefits spread across the country.
Humala's supporters like all communists are covetous ingrates.
Being successful is a guaranteed way of drawing the looters out of hiding to plunder by promising the have nots that they will steal from the haves and give it to them.
This could get real ughly really fast. They have elected a complete POS! We can hope the army is still on the right side!
Sooner or later the dog returns to his vomit.
Communism is all about breaking this commandment.
Amen
Then we'll have to move north and take care of our own.
“It’s not the people who vote that count. It’s the people who count the votes.” - Josef Stalin
They elected a communist just like the one 52.9% of American voters elected in 2008. That just pi$$es me off... in BOTH instances.
LLS
“With the election of Barack Obama, nothing should be surprising.”
Nope. The Islamic revolution wildfire is part of it too.
You are correct. Makes a beeline from covetousness to murder too. Every single hard communist country does, and sooner rather than later.
We’ll have a giant war in South America one day and we’ll have to remove 10 million communists.
Then we’ll have to move north and take care of our own.
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Reverse the order, I think.
It seems contrary to the trend elsewhere...
It probably represents an authentic support in the mid to high 40 percentile. The rest is fraud. Here, anyway.
Latin Americans are very susceptible to class envy. If they feel that the “rich” are growing faster that the “poor” they fall for the message that they are doing so on the backs of the poor.
Furthermore, they are addicted to government intervention in solving their personal financial problems. The first response to any grievance is “why doesn’t the government do something about it?”
The common person in Latin America admires capitalism but insists that it is “cruel”, that is, it produces losers, as well as winners. In the long run, most don’t want to take the risk that capitalism requires.
At least these are my observations in the 20 years I have lived and/or worked with the middle and lower middle classes.
LLS
Judging by the number of Peruvians still arriving in NJ every day, I assumed it wasn’t too well off. Our Peruvian Day parade is much larger than our St. Patrick’s Day parade, for which we used to be very well known.
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