García looks set for presidential win in Peru

Financial Times ^ | June 6, 2006 | Hal Weitzman

[billorites]

Alan García looked to be on course to win a narrow victory in presidential election in Peru on Sunday, according to an early “quick count” released minutes after polls closed.

Mr García, a populist former president, had 52.8 per cent of the vote, ahead of Ollanta Humala, his radical nationalist rival in the presidential race, who polled 47.2. per cent in a sample of votes counted by Apoyo, the country’s most respected pollster.

“We seem to have a probable winner,” said Alfredo Torres, head of Apoyo, the country’s most respected pollster, which conducted the quick count.

In comments to the media on Sunday morning, Mr Humala, a political neophyte who has promised to hike taxes on foreign investors and stamp out corruption, appeared to hint at conceding that he had lost the election. “We have achieved a great deal,” he said. “The agenda for the next government is clear.”

The quick count was in line with pre-election polls by Apoyo and other companies, which had showed Mr García in front, but had also suggested that the race was tightening in the final days.

Both candidates appeared to have performed strongly in their regional bases. Mr García polled well in most of the north, particularly on the coast. In La Libertad, his Apra party’s stronghold, he received some 68.7 per cent, according to the Apoyo count.

Mr Humala did well in the south, particularly in impoverished highland areas. In his ancestral hometown of Ayacucho he received 83.2 per cent of the vote, while in Arequipa, the country’s third largest city, he was on course to poll 60.5 per cent.

The big difference may well have been made in Lima, the richest concentration of votes, where Mr García appeared to clean up with 63.1 per cent.

Up to 20 per cent of voters have told pollsters they would rather spoil their ballot papers than vote for either candidate and about 6-8 per cent of voters told pollsters they were still undecided in the final days of the race, suggesting that a turnaround in the figures was not impossible.

Mr Torres warned on Friday that any early result in which there was less than 6 percentage points between the candidates could not be considered a definitive result.

Whoever becomes Peru’s next president may struggle to govern the country, given the regional divisions exposed in what has often been a bad-tempered campaign. Neither Mr Garcia nor Mr Humala will enjoy a majority in Congress: the nationalist has the larger faction, with 45 seats, while the Apra will have 36 representatives in the 120-member legislature.

[billorites]

This will be portrayed as a slap in the face of the U.S., a victory of the "Left" against the Yanqui.

It is not.

The rejection of Humala is a great victory for U.S./Peruvian relations, a great victory for free trade and, most important, a tremendous positive move for the future of all Peruvians.

All these Latin pols are leftists. There are leftists; and there are crazy, nationalist, populist, self-destructive leftists.

Garcia is one of the "good" kind.

[FatherofFive]

This is a preview of a McCain-Clinton contest in '08. We lose either way, just not as much with one of them!

[inkling]

All I know is that Hugo Chavez's candidate lost. And that is a victory not only for Peru and the U.S., but for all the Western Hemisphere.