Living in Peru : your everyday companion

This article was published today at a website called "Monday Morning" from Beirut, Lebanon. With everything these people are currently going through, it is amazing and comforting to see that journalists and bloggers still have an open eye and ear for what's going on in the rest of the world. At least in this case the technical infrastructure seems to be intact.

Peaceful Peruvian Greetings to Beirut, Lebanon.



A reinvented Alan Garcia

Once reviled for leading Peru to economic ruin, the charismatic ex-president Alan Garcia -- who has been sworn in as president again -- reinvented himself as a moderate, aware of financial realities but dedicated to social change.
The social-democrat won last month’s presidential election, trouncing Ollanta Humala, a political newcomer whose program of radical change caused a major stir. The victory marked a formidable comeback for Garcia, who was reviled for years after his 1985-1990 administration marked by four-digit inflation, unchecked leftist insurgencies and rampant corruption.
In his electoral campaign, he capitalized on widespread concerns that Humala, a close ally of Venezuela’s firebrand President Hugo Chavez, would run an inept, authoritarian government that would plunge the South American country into renewed chaos.
While he admits he made some errors during his administration, Garcia, 57, says he has learned the hard way how Peru should be run.
The once-fiery Garcia has toned down his discourse, which now goes a bit heavier on free-market ideas and easier on the populist rhetoric.
Garcia drew support from the political right and the business community, which once opposed him but deeply feared an Humala victory.
The new president returned to the political scene in 2001 after nine years of self-imposed exile, and narrowly lost his first reelection bid to Alejandro Toledo, the outgoing president.
Charisma plays a key role in the political strength of the smooth-talking lawyer. A golden-tongued orator, he likes to punctuate his speech with poetry and salutes to independence heroes dear to the hearts of Peruvians.
Garcia, whose previous government turned Peru into an international economic outcast, regained a degree of credibility in the business sector with his promises to maintain orthodox macroeconomic discipline.
He has pledged to cut government spending, boost economic growth and support small and medium-size businesses. Also on his program is a crackdown on crime.
Born in Lima on May 23, 1949, Garcia studied law in Madrid and sociology in Paris. He once said he partly financed his studies by playing a guitar in the streets.
He joined the center-left APRA -- Peru’s oldest political party -- as a student in 1976 and was elected to the Constitutional Assembly in 1978. Two years later, he won a seat in Congress.
Having served as general secretary of APRA from 1983 to 1985, Garcia was elected president in 1985 at the age of 36.
At the end of his term, he faced several corruption lawsuits. He fled the country in 1992, when troops were sent to arrest him after then-President Alberto Fujimori shut down Congress and imposed martial law.
During his years in exile in Bonn, Paris and Bogota, Garcia wrote several books about Peru and Latin America.

tags : Peru politics Garcia Lebanon Beirut

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