El Mal Menor

Peru's voters begrudgingly select their next president tomorrow, yet the genuineness of the candidates democratic principles are doubted by large portions of the electorate. Gustavo Gorriti, Peru's best known investigative journalist who also helped bring down the first Fujimori, sums up the mood of peruanos as they reach the finish line of what has been a particularly long campaign since the first round was held on April 10. He states:

"It's a triage situation. You have an emergency and you choose the best alternative. In medicine, you choose the person who has the best chance to survive. Here, it's the person who offers the best alternative for democracy's survival."

Most media and business interests have broken towards Keiko, fearful of Humala's past professed radicalism. This is interesting since her father and his puppet master, Vladamiro Montesinos, relentlessly attacked any whiff of media independence during the dictatorship (Gotirri, for example, was kidnapped by Fujimori thugs and has decided to 'conditionally' back Humala).

The exception to the media cheerleading for Keiko has been the daily La Republica, who have gone with wall to wall coverage of systematic forced sterilization programs of poor women during the fujioriomato. It is a bleak and tragic story, and though Keiko has had plenty of praise for her father's regime, it's hard to pinpoint what exactly this has to do with her campaign (granted she was her father's 'first lady' after her parent's divorce). Nevertheless, La Republica has posted a well-made documentary here that incidentally explains a basic truth about Peruvian society and how it ended up with these two mostly despised candidates.

From its inception, the country has been controlled by an elite class, based exclusively in Lima. This sliver of Peruvian society maintains a deep-seeded colonial mentality that patronizes the indigenous majority and sees no reason why it should become more pluralistic and insistent on a government which includes the voices of that majority in local and national matters. Exhibit A of the consequences of such a mentality can be found here. Exhibit B will be tomorrow's winner.