Decisión 2011 – Part II

Keiko & Ollanta

Well here we are a couple of days after the Peruvian presidential/congressional elections. And the winner is… well there’s not one yet but the field of 10 has been narrowed down to two – Ollanta Humala and Keiko Fujimori. Here was the breakdown after the Sunday’s 1st round of voting with 90% of the votes counted - Ollanta “The good soldier” Humala- 31.7%; Keiko “I’m not a dictator like my daddy” Fujimori – 23.3%; Pedro Pablo “El Gringo” Kuczynski – 18.8$; Alejandro “El Cholo” Toledo – 15.4 % and Luis “El Mudo” Castañeda - 10%. The remaining five also rans totaled up to about 1%. And the APRA candidate… Zero point zero. Mr. APRA – fat, drunk and stupid is no way to go through life. The 0% is due to a colossal APRA failure for not fielding a candidate despite a fairly successful run under the current Aprista president.

Brief recap of the two remaining candidates – Humala is the nationalist candidate who is promising a redistribution of wealth and has ties to Hugo Chavez of Venezuela and Evo Morales of Bolivia. Fujimori is the daughter of a former corrupt dictator of Peru who is promising… well, I’m not sure what she’s promising other than not being a corrupt dictator like her dad.

Six months ago Nobel Laureate (and failed presidential candidate) Mario Vargas Llosa boldly predicted that if it came down to the run-off between Humala and Fujimori it would be like choosing between cancer and AIDS. Since, he supported Toledo and asked PPK and Castaneda to back out of the race less than a week before the elections. Now gets to make that choice. Some respect his right to state his opinion. Others believe he should shut his mouth stick to writing books about military cadets and circle jerks.

Now it’s time for my APOLITICAL bold prediction. Keiko takes it on June 5. Keiko might give PPK a call and offer him a high level position in her government in turn for his endorsement (how about a PPKeiko mascot – a little furry chinita?). Not that PPK supporters care about any of that political maneuvering - they´re young, savvy, and educated and will be physically, mentally and spiritually unable to vote for Ollanta. So all PPK votes go to Keiko. Where do the Toledo, Castaneda supporters go? Who knows so we’ll split them evenly between Keiko and Ollanta. And how about we give the 1% that the other also-rans garnered to Ollanta. The blank votes should be factored in somehow but I have no idea how so we’ll just throw them out (I never said I was a political analyst and I’m horrible at math).

So that leaves us with Keiko winning the election with 54% of the votes and Ollanta in second with 46%. Factor in the Win Williams margin of error and God’s sense of humor and the Peruvian presidency is pretty much free game. My opinions as to who I would like to see win are as worthless as balls on a priest so I’ve omitted them from this post.

The folks in my town of Big River are speaking of picking the lesser of the two evils. Why does that sound so familiar? Oh yeah – that was my choice in every US presidential election since at least 1988.