The Guardian has a piece about the upcoming presidential election in Peru of this Sunday, April 9. If you are interested in the first-round favourite Ollanta Humala you should read it, because the document presents some information about him.
Then there is this piece of knowledge:
But surveys suggest professional politicians are almost universally despised as self-serving. This context helps explain the apparent popularity of Mr Humala, who has not previously run for office, according to John Crabtree of the Centre for Latin American Studies at Oxford University.
You don't need to survey for that, though. Whenever I talk with my Peruvian friends and taxi drivers it's very clear that politicians are liars, corrupt, self-serving and anything but responsible. Women and non-politians are trusted more. Also I'm told that it helped Fujimori that he was Asian and that also Humberto Lay, an evangelical pastor with Chinese parents who runs for president, profits from the notion that Asians have a better moral base.
Also most Peruvians I talked with feel that Peru has a lot of unused natural resources that the past governments should have used to enrich the people. They usually talk about the sea resources.
I'll comment more about the elections here, as I'm very interested in the outcome. Though I'll be more interested in what the new government actually will achieve. Hopes are generally very low.
(Via Findory)