Humala's First-Round Lead Widens

Just one week before April 10 national elections in Peru, nationalist candidate Ollanta Humala now appears to be the undisputed frontrunner in a five-person race. In a new Catholic University poll released Friday Humala gained nearly 10 points (24.3%), now five percentage points ahead of his nearest rival, Alejandro Toledo (18.8%). Keiko Fujimori runs in a close third at 18.4% with Pedro Pablo Kuczynski in fourth at 16.4% and former Lima mayor Luis Castaneda in the more distant fifth slot (12%).

The Catholic University poll was conducted between March 26 and 29, and, according to Reuters, had a margin of error of 2.7%.

The polling firm, Datum, meanwhile, released similar figures from a survey taken over the same time period. Humala was up 4 percentage points there, at 21.4%, followed by PPK at 17.5%. Alejandro Toledo had back slipped to third.

In two polls released Sunday Humala’s first-round lead looks even larger. Via Reuters: In an Ipsos poll (March 26 to April 1, margin of error 2.2%), Humala now gets 27% of the vote while CPI shows the former military officer at 28%. It’s Keiko Fujimori who is currently in a distant second according to Ipsos (20.5%) while Toledo retains his second-place position (19.6%) in the CPI poll.

Notably, the new Ipsos numbers also indicate Humala is in a statistical tie with Fujimori, Kuczynski and Castenda in a hypothetical second round. At the current moment, he would lose by four percentage points in a head-to-head race against former president Alejandro Toledo.

These numbers look like they will be the last public figures to be released before next Sunday’s vote. As Bloomberg notes, election law in Peru prohibits research firms from publishing polling data during the last week of the campaign.

More on Peruvian elections from BBC Mundo which reports on last night’s final televised debate between all five candidates. The headline reveals the new electoral dynamic: “Everyone against Humala.” Lost in that headline, however, are some interesting new proposals like Humala’s call for the creation of a new High Commission on Drug Policy to take on narcotrafficking in the country. Humala also said, should he be elected, he would establish a new rural police force. Matters of “citizen security” and “drug trafficking” were the focus of the debate. More from La República.

This weekend’s bullet points:

· A meeting between Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez and Colombia’s Juan Manuel Santos Saturday was postponed until this coming Saturday after the Venezuelan president’s plane experienced mechanical difficulties in Bolivia over the weekend. The issue of Venezuelan drug capo Walid Makled’s extradition is the matter which continues to hang above the Chavez-Santos meeting, but, according to reports, Colombia’s position seems all but decided. Both the Washington Post and Wall Street Journal report this weekend that Makled will be sent to Venezuela, not the US – this despite concerns of some US Republicans, among them Connie Mack and, more recently, Senator Richard Lugar (R-IN). According to Colombian law, when competing extradition requests exist, the individual in question must be extradited to the country where the most serious charges exist. In the case of Makled that means Venezuela where the kingpin has been charged with both cocaine trafficking and murder. An official announcement could be made at or after next Saturday’s Chavez-Santos meeting. More from the AP on an interview Makled gave to Univision that aired over the weekend. I don’t know if there’s any new information here, although Makled again implicated high-ranking Venezuelan officials in the drug trade.

· In the long-term, the Santos-Chavez meeting could be more significant because of additions that are expected to be made to a bilateral counternarcotics pact between Venezuela and Colombia. El Tiempo has the details this morning after an interview with Colombian Defense Minister Rodrigo Rivera who highlights bilateral intelligence sharing, judicial cooperation, and operational coordination on matters of drug interdiction.

· Venezuelan foreign minister Nicolas Maduro on Sunday highlighted new agreements signed Chavez had signed with Argentina, Uruguay, and Bolivia last week. The AP reports briefly. Mercopress highlights new trade deals with Argentina. El Universal highlights a $10 million gift President Chavez made to the Uruguay’s university hospital in Montevideo. Venezuelanalysis on agreements with Uruguay to share use of Venezuela’s “Simon Bolivar” communications satellite, launched in 2008. And El Universal says counter-narcotics cooperation agreements, among others, were signed in Bolivia.

· Meanwhile, in Venezuela, Insight has more on police reform in the country after the announcement last week that the notorious Caracas Metropolitan Police will be disbanded in the next 90 days. In politics, El Universal reports that Lara governor Henry Falcón’s Patria Para Todos (PPT) party seems to have joined forces with the Mesa de la Unidad (MUD) to form a new oppositional force, the “Frente por el Cambio” ahead of next year’s presidential vote.

· An investigative report from Semana looks at cushy “prison” life for the over 250 Colombian military officials convicted of carrying out human rights violations and now spending their time at Centro de Reclusión Militar (CRM) de Tolemaida.

· Mexico analyst Diego Valle with new charts and statistics showing that Julian Leyzaola’s security crackdown in Tijuana, frequently cited as a major success story in Mexico’s struggle with crime and cartels, had “no effect” on murder numbers in the city.

· BBC reports that Mexico’s National Human Rights Commission (CNDH) says 5,397 people have been reported as “disappeared” since Felipe Calderon’s drug wars began in 2006.

· Foreign Policy interviews US drug czar Gil Kerlikowske. Of Latin Americanist interest, Kerlikowske explicitly rejects the notion that cartel activity in Mexico represents an “insurgency,” and frankly, seems a bit annoyed the magazine even asks him about the issue. When asked about how he sees the “big picture” of drugs in Latin America, his response:

“It used to be fairly easy to categorize countries as production countries, transit countries, or consumer countries. I think those lines have been -- if not completely obliterated -- generally blurred. The amount of drug use in Mexico is significant. It's also clear from my most recent trip to visit drug treatment centers in Colombia that they're concerned as well.”

And responding to a question about recent calls for legalization made by a number of ex-Latin American presidents, including Mexico’s Vicente Fox, Kerlikowske also seems less than enthused.

· In Honduras, AP reports that a controversial education law has been approved after dialogue between teachers and the government collapsed late last week. No word yet on exactly when the law will go into effect, but leaders of the teachers’ union say their protests against the government, now entering their fourth week, will go on. More from the Real News in Tegucigalpa last week. Meanwhile, IPS with an excellent report on new calls being made by former Zelaya interior minister Victor Meza and others that a constitutional reform is urgently needed to stop the “re-militarization” of Honduran society that has occurred since the June 2009 coup. Such a reform would, according to analysts, seek to eliminate the current role of the military as the “guarantor” of power transfers. Honduran military expert Leticia Salomón adds this would mean ending a system in which the military acts as border guards, as an arbiter of political power and of social conflicts, forest rangers, guarantors of public safety, and protectors of particular private interests.

· Reuters says Nicaraguan diplomat Miguel d’Escoto has backtracked on his decision last week to represent Libya at the UN. Instead, the former president of the General Assembly will be named his own country’s representative to the international body.

· The CS Monitor reports on major pro-government demonstrations in the Nicaraguan capital of Managua this weekend. According to journalist Tim Rogers, the protests were “choreographed” to dwarf an anti-Ortega protest earlier in the weekend.

· Brazil’s conservative weekly Veja has resurrected charges that al-Qaeda, Hezbollah, and Hamas are operating within Brazil to raise money and incite attacks elsewhere. Reuters reports in English.

· And finally, following up on last Friday’s post on Brazil, two reports at Mercopress worth reading. First, a look at Dilma’s attempt to balance “cooperation” and “competition” during her visit to China next week. The four-day visit corresponds with the holding of a BRIC summit. And second, a report on an interview longtime Brazilian foreign policy adviser Marco Aurelio Garcia gave to O Estado de Sao Paulo this weekend. Garcia says the foundations of Dilma and Lula’s foreign policies remain the same (“good relations with South America, Latin America, Africa, China, India, European Union and the United States”) but admits there have been some changes. Speaking about Dilma’s decision to support sanctions against Iran, Garcia says “Lula da Silva always underlined social questions. Dilma on the other hand will keep that sensitivity but wants to emphasize human rights issues which are linked to her past as a political prisoner.” At the risk of reading into this too much, it should be noted that Dilma Rousseff also postponed, for a second time, a meeting with Hugo Chavez that was supposed to occur last week. (An earlier meeting in February was cancelled after the Arab-South America summit in Lima was called off). Dilma says the latest meeting was postponed because she decided to travel to Portugal with Lula. No make-up date has yet been set, although there are indications it may finally take place in May.