Peru: Small steps to the right
Corruption in mainly liberal, or left, governments might be flipping the scale
Peruvian ex-presidents Ollanta Humala and Alejandro Toledo are facing legal sanctions for accepting money for political campaigns from the Brazilian company Odebrecht. A pre-trail detention was ordered for Humala and his wife who were accused of money laundering as a result of payments made by said company during his electoral campaigns of 2006 and 2011. On the other hand, Toledo had received bribes from the multinational Brazilian organization and has already been condemned for his crimes.
These political scandals in Peru could give insight on how individuals’ voting tendencies might shift to the other side of the political spectrum. It must be taken IGNORE INTO consideration that Humala created the Nationalist party, Toledo won the 2001 elections with “Peru Posible”, and Jorge Cuba, politician that has also been accused of corruption, was part of the government ruled by the American Revolutionary Popular Alliance. All of the previously mentioned are considered to belong to the left or center left on the political spectrum.
As consequence, the image of said parties has been harmed and it may imply that Peruvians could use the nation’s elections as a way to penalize said corruption by flipping the scale and choosing a more conservative leader which is a tendency that seems to be occurring with in Latin America. This sanction can be seen in the recent victory of Pedro Pablo Kuczynski, who won the 2016 election with the party “Peruvians for change”, a right winged party.
The turn towards right inclined parties can also be seen in the consequences of the corruption scandals in Brazil which included the imprisonment of the nation’s ex-president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and the impeachment of Dilma Rousseff, who was later replaced by Michel Temer. In Argentina, there was a noticeable change with the victory of Mauricio Macri after several years of a government lead by the Kirchner family. Paraguay is another country that showed a political modification with the election of Horacio Cartes through the Colorado party.
Latin American Post | Diana Cárdenas
Copy edited by Susana Cicchetto
