The America of individual liberty and democratically approved limited government is surrounded, outnumbered, infiltrated and under assault from socialist forces promising relief from the burdens of poverty. The latest country being lost to socialism may be Peru.
Ollanta Humala: The news that Ollanta Humala was leading in the opinion polls, ahead of Peru's first-round presidential elections on Sunday 9 April, set alarm bells ringing in Washington and sent the stock-exchange in Lima tumbling.The “PINK TIDE” sweeping South America and threatening to consume Mexico is a reaction to the immense disparity between the “haves” and the “have nots” in Latin America. The old saying that people vote their wallets has never been truer. The United States needs to explain in words and demostrate in actions why we have achieved the prosperity all our citizens enjoy relative to the rest of the world.
Still, not even a furious smear campaign by his opponents has done anything to dent the popularity of Humala, an ex-army lieutenant-colonel, self-styled nationalist and acknowledged protégé of Venezuela's president, Hugo Chávez. On the contrary, the more the establishment pounds him, the more popular he becomes.
Peru: The Next Domino? Like Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez, a failed former coup planner and controversial military officer, Ollanta has inundated his audiences using fervid nationalist rhetoric while playing the “I am not one of them” card to gain popularity among the masses while bashing the country’s traditional elites. Sufficiently different from Bolivia’s Evo Morales or Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez, the only comparison that readily comes to mind are the early years of Argentina’s man of all seasons Juan Perón. What Latin America (and certainly Washington) is clearly watching is whether Peru under a Ollanta presidency would be the next domino to fall, the next presidential victory of a recruit for the pink tide, affording this leftist movement with a continued momentum that could next sweep Ecuador and Mexico into its ranks when those countries hold their elections later this year.
