Humala Leads Round-One Vote Count, Fujimori in Second

With two-thirds of the ballots counted, Ollanta Humala looks like he will take round one in Peru. Reuters reports this morning that the official tally has Humala currently at 28.06% while Keiko Fujimori and Pedro Pablo Kuczynski battle it out for second with 22.49% and 22.29%, respectively. The two individuals who were frontrunners for much of the campaign, Alejandro Toledo and Luis Castaneda, look like they’ll finish in a distant fourth and fifth place, respectively, with vote percentages in the mid to low teens.

WOLA’s Jo-Marie Burt and Coletta Youngers, reporting from Peru, cite the monitoring group Transparencia which shows Humala’s lead being even larger (31.3%). Their numbers also show Fujimori more comfortably ahead of PPK (23.2% vs. 18.7%) for the second-place slot. La República confirms.

Meanwhile, La República, using early Datum numbers, shows Ollanta Humala’s Gana Party as coming out victorious in congressional balloting, getting somewhere around 40 seats in the National Congress compared to approx. 35 seats for Fujimori’s Fuerza 2011 party.

The commentary on the results is largely the same:

The New York Times’: “The results…suggest that symbols of Peru’s economic growth that are most evident to its urban moneyed class, like the construction boom that is reshaping Lima’s skyline mean little to the impoverished residents of the mountainous hinterland.”

Aldo Panfichi, a political scientist at the Catholic University in Lima, quoted in the Times coverage, says the growing disparities between Lima and the rest of the country explain the precipitous decline of former Lima mayor Luis Castaneda, in particular.

In the AP’s coverage, Political analyst Leon Trahtemberg says Sunday’s results “reflected the failure of President Garcia's ‘triumphalism’ in obtaining major foreign investment while “‘forgetting to attend to the poor.’”

Carlos Basombrio, quoted in the Washington Post over the weekend, says current President Alan García’s attempt to present Peru as a rising continental star is offensive to the third of Peruvians who still live in poverty. “Ordinary people take a look at their lives and, even if they have risen out of poverty, life is precarious and they feel offended.”

Some analysts and human rights groups are presenting a Humala vs. Fujimori second-round as a worst-case scenario come true. It was conservative author and recent Nobel Prize winner Mario Vargas Llosa who, last week, referred to the then hypothetical match-up as a choice between "terminal cancer and AIDS." More than a few reports on the Peruvian elections in the US this weekend have reprinted the statement, doing nothing to help understand the Peruvian political landscape.

In fact, equating Humala with Fujimori seems to obscure more than illuminate. No matter their pasts, very real policy differences exist between the two – most notably on social and economic issues. If Humala’s rise over the last month has meant anything, it’s that inequality and regional disparities have grown, despite – or perhaps because – of an economic boom. As some have noted, Humala was the only candidate to make economic and social changes a central element of his campaign, advocating things like a means-tested pension plan for those over 65, improved access to healthcare for the poor, and higher taxes on foreign mining companies.

For those hardly radical positions, the value of the Peruvian sol and the country's main stock index both fell over the last two weeks.

In the weeks to come, there are also likely to emerge some significant differences between the two on things like drug policy and, yes, human rights. Interestingly, Humala was the only major candidate during the campaign to say he would not pardon Alberto Fujimori, and I don’t think we’ll see Keiko Fujimori changing her position on that anytime soon.

This weekend’s bullet points:

· In Colombia, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos met Saturday. El Tiempo says 16 new accords were signed on issues ranging from counter-narcotics cooperation to health and infrastructure development. What’s received the most attention, however, was an unexpected addition to the meeting: Honduran President Porfirio Lobo. Colombia Reports suggests Chavez may soon come out in support of Honduras’s return to the OAS, under the condition that Manuel Zelaya be allowed to return home with immunity from prosecution. Apparently Lobo has agreed. We’ll see if he can now get the Honduran judiciary on board. AFP reports that OAS Secretary General José Miguel Insulza was quite pleased by the Saturday meeting and says more details should be announced in the coming days. Mel Zelaya also says he’s optimistic.

· Also on Honduras, the AP reports on new steps being taken to incorporate the military into the country’s anti-drug fight. The country’s Defense Minister, Marlon Pascua, made the announcement Friday, saying the air force and navy were being trained for their new operations.

· The US State Department’s Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs has issued its 2010 “Country Reports on Human Rights Practices.” All the reports should be available as PDFs here.

· In Mexico, additional bodies were found in mass graves in the state of Tamaulipas over the weekend, bringing the total count to 72. AP updates its reporting. Meanwhile, the Washington Post reports from San Luis Potosí on rising numbers of children being killed in Mexico’s drug wars. BBC on the firing of Morelos state security chief, Gen. Gaston Menchaca Arias. Mexico’s Proceso reports on the US State Dept’s 2010 Mexico human rights report, available here, which argues the Mexican military is guilty of systematic rights violations.

· In Ecuador, the government’s plan to hold a popular referendum on May 7 is being strongly opposed by the country’s largest indigenous organization, CONAIE. More from AP.

· In Guatemala, the divorce of Sandra Torres and Alvaro Colom appears to be moving forward after a Guatemalan judge dismissed a suit seeking to block the separation. AP reports.

· The New York Times today looks at the growing presence of Chinese migrants and money in the small South American country of Suriname.

· The Wall Street Journal previews Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff’s travels to China this week. She’s in Beijing today, tomorrow, and Wednesday before a BRIC meeting on Thursday. WSJ: “In a briefing with reporters this week, a Brazilian government spokesman said Ms. Rousseff's trip to China is about ‘reciprocity’ between the two countries in terms of trade and investments in each other's economy. For instance, 84% of Brazilian exports to China are commodities, while 98% of Chinese sales to Brazil are manufactured goods, according to the Brazilian government.”

· Uruguayan President José Mujica has upped his lobbying efforts for Venezuela’s entry into Mercosur, penning an opinion piece in Brazil’s Folha de Sao Paulo over the weekend. The Paraguayan Congress continues to hold up Venezuela’s full incorporation into the regional bloc.

· Jackson Diehl in the Washington Post attacks Obama for not pressing Juan Manuel Santos to extradite Walid Makled to the US rather than Venezuela. Mark Weisbrot in The Guardian uses the Makled case, among other examples, to make an argument about Washington’s dwindling regional hegemony in South America.

· And finally, an El Paso court Friday acquitted Cuban former CIA operative Luis Posada Carriles of all charges – perjury, obstruction of justice, and immigration fraud. AP reports on the decision and reactions to it, here and here.