More Peruvians Favor Socialism Than Capitalism

[Judi Lynn]

Source: Gallup Poll

August 6, 2008
More Peruvians Favor Socialism Than Capitalism
Populist rhetoric likely resonates with dissatisfied populace

by Steve Crabtree

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- A simple contradiction helps illuminate growing political tensions in Peru: About half of Peruvians (49%), according to a 2007 Gallup Poll in the South American nation, say they personally are more socialist than capitalist in their attitudes, while just 16% say they are more capitalist than socialist. However, 45% of Peruvians view their country as more capitalist than socialist, while just 24% say it is more socialist than capitalist.



Despite Peru's strong overall economic growth in recent years, President Alan Garcia remains singularly unpopular; a recent poll by Ipsos-Apoyo put his approval rating in Peru's main cities at just 26%. According to a 2007 Gallup Poll, just 21% of Peruvians say they approve of their country's leadership.

Garcia's political weakness has made him vulnerable to attacks from populist leaders in the country's southern Andean region, an area that has failed to see much of the economic progress enjoyed further north. Hernan Fuentes, head of the Puno region in the south, regularly criticizes Garcia's economic liberalism, favoring the "socialist nationalism" model exemplified by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. Populist former army officer Ollanta Humala, who narrowly lost the 2006 presidential election to Garcia, also has a political stronghold in the south.

Garcia's rivals point to the fact that poverty is still a huge problem in southern Peru, afflicting as much as 70% of the population. Many Peruvians share their disapproval; almost two-thirds (64%) say they are dissatisfied with efforts to deal with the poor. These problems are nowhere more challenging than in Peru's rural south, where many residents live as subsistence farmers, lacking the infrastructure that would connect them to the country's market economy.



Read more: http://www.gallup.com/poll/109297/More-Peruvians-Favor-Socialism-Than-Capitalism.aspx

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Peru's beloved President, and _Bush ally, Alan Garcia

[Radical Activist]

1. US intervention is the only reason most of Latin America isn't socialist.

Another example of how those who promote free trade don't really favor democracy. If they believed in democracy then they would allow people to keep socialist leaders in power.

[Judi Lynn]

2. As a DU'er who lived in South America told us during April, 2002, while we were watching for news

from Caracas from a DU'er who was living there at the time during the coup, phone polls in Latin America don't reflect at ALL the full extent of views held by the massive poor sector, as so many of them simply do not have land lines, are NEVER contacted by phone for polls, since they don't have phones.

She said they also don't get asked by neighborhood polls, as poll takers do NOT go into the barrios.

I've never forgotten what she said, as it seems completely easy to understand, and factor in when considering ANY poll from a country with a huge poor population. They don't get completely represented, ordinarily.

[Zenlitened]

3. So do most Wall Street bankers these days.

Gee, it's a small world after all! :loveya: :loveya: :puke:

[defendandprotect]

4. Trusting in polls --- ??? Capitalism will go down vs democratic socialism . . . given the chance --

Unregulated capitalism is merely organized crime ---

it's a system intended to move the wealth and assets of a nation from the

many to the few ---

... a ridiculous "King-of-the-Hill" system ---

[Peace Patriot]

5. Shows ya what hanging with Bush will do. Garcia's approval is as bad as Bush's!

Shows ya what hanging with Bush will do. Garcia's approval is as bad as Bush's!

You'd think our Democrats would learn. (I was just floored by the DEMOCRATIC Congress' single digit approving rating. Christamighty, how'd they do THAT?!! Worse than Bush!).

In the U.S., and Peru, leaders who represent 20% of the people act like God's anointed, and in both places EIGHTY PERCENT of the people are UNREPRESENTED. Here we have 'TRADE SECRET,' PROPRIETARY vote counting, with the code owned by rightwing Bushite corporations, and with virtually no audit/recount controls, to explain that phenomenon. I wonder what the method is in Peru for shoving "free trade" down the majority's throats, like war was shoved down ours. I don't know if they have transparent vote counting, but I do know that Garcia played the "terrorist" card against Ollanta Humala in the last election (a la what Rove did to Max Cleland).

I can't imagine the conversations that these leaders--and I'm including our corrupt Democrats as well (Garcia was a "leftist," once, corrupted by "free trade," rather in the mold of Bill Clinton)--have with themselves. How can they live with themselves? I can see George Bush living with himself--there's nobody home. And Cheney & brethren have 'filthy lucre' where their blood should be. I don't see any internal conflict in them, and there never was any potential for good to contrast with the bad. But what about a man like Alan Garcia, who was elected as a leftist originally, and wasted that opportunity--Peru could have been way ahead of the game on social justice, the way Venezuela is--on greed and corruption, and somehow gets elected again and now he's "free trade" corrupt. He does remind me of Clinton, an idealist in his early life, who was an anti-Vietnam War protester, but who wasted his golden opportunity for peace and social justice in the U.S....I was going to say on a blowjob, but that is the rightwing narrative. Bill was wasting his intelligence, his compassion, and his awesome political capital long before that--wasting it on global corporate predators and their sweatshop schemes and their dirty playing at the WTO, and achievements like destroying the local dairy industry in Jamaica (U.S. Ag dumping cheap powsdered milk on their market), on ripping up the social fabric of Argentina with World Bank/IMF loan sharkism, and on softening up Iraq for the Bush Cartel.

The allure of "free trade"--so like the madness and glitziness of the 1920s--is easy, quick killings by bilking other people of their labor, their ingenuity and loyalty as workers, and their common infrastructure and resources. And you can see it Alan Garcia, and his newly rich urban supporters (fast-dwindled, it seems)--as with the liberals and progressives who got rich on Clinton neo-liberalism--so that now Labor Democrats are rare, in the party built by organized Labor. I don't see how they can stand themselves, and I shudder at the lies they tell themselves to bury what they once believed, and wanted, and dreamed of, as public servants, out of sight.

[Peace Patriot]

6. I wish the Mods would explain why they sent this threat to Siberia.

It's a VERY IMPORTANT and timely news story, dated today, pointing to yet another neo-liberal/Bushite failure in South America, where an urban elite gets rich exploiting everybody else and making their ugly compromises with "Organized Money" (as FDR called it), and are, in truth, BRIBED to make those above them on the dogpile really, really, really rich.

The Democrats (including Obama) supported this "free trade" deal. Is this what the Democratic Party stands for--fucking over the workers and the poor? I believe that some of them once meant well--in a 'swallowing Reagan's trickle down theory' sort of way. I'm familiar with this kind of Democrat in California--open the borders, mix people together in the global economy, "free trade" will save the world. Some of them are assholes. Some of them didn't used to be. I wonder if this colossal failure of "trickle down" in Peru will finally get through to them. Some of them, I think, live in La-la Land, oblivious to the momentous, continent-wide, earth-shaking rebellion that is taking place in South America, and is now spreading to Central America. It is a very good thing--an amazing, peaceful, democratic, social justice revolution, in a region in which the poor have plenty of cause to be slitting the throats of the rich, and they are not. They have instead gotten organized, and, among other things, demanded and achieved honest elections.

Our political/corporate establishment, exhausted from two decades of robbing the poor to give to the rich, think they can "handle" this (to them) distant rumbling of change with the same tired old methods, rhetoric, lies and infamy. I hear it in Obama's peeches. He's going to send Peace Corps volunteers to South America, to supply them with U.S. leadership. The arrogance! I know how hard it is, Barack, I really do, to change this 'TRADE SECRET' voting counting paradigm, and to survive within it in the meantime. I just think it is the wrong choice to pander to northern chauvinism, when South America is solving its own problems, thank you very much. They don't need no stinkin peace corps volunteers. They need us to STOP TRYING TO TOPPLE THEIR GOVERNMENTS--whether by hook (Peace Corps spies for Exxon Mobil), or crook (the 4th Fleet). They need us to stop siding with Exxon Mobil and Chevron and Chiquita and DynCorp, and the predatory World Bank, and the fascists thugs running Colombia. South Americans would welcome us to the trade table if we were honest and just, but we and our predator corporations have been bastards and worse. So they are forming their own Common Market (UNASUR) and (proposed by Brazil) their own common defense--without U.S. leadership or membership.

We, the people of the U.S., and the grass roots of the Democratic Party, need to understand this reality even if our leaders refuse to.