Rudy goes to Lima

19/05/2011

By now it’s a pretty tired narrative: Sherriff Giuliani rolls into town and uses the strong arm of the law to straighten out all that’s gone crooked. He did it in New York. Then he took the road show to Mexico, Brazil, and Colombia. And now he’s in Lima advising Keiko Fujimori, suddenly the frontrunner in the Peruvian presidential election run-off.

The timing couldn’t be better for the aspirant. Because though the former New York mayor is there in a “consulting” role, it’d take a healthy amount of audacity to deny his presence is anything but an endorsement. And that’s pretty important when your father’s legacy strikes fear in the hearts of the most moderate libertarians.

But that really depends on whom you talk to, because for Peruvians, Alberto Fujimori is either the man who saved the country from the terrorists or a sociopath whose would-be public safety agenda did a poor job of concealing his fangs.

Yes, Giuliani has shown where he stands.

You needn’t look further than the photos of him and Keiko smiling together… like some crime-fighting super couple.

Of course some will argue it’s just business; it doesn’t mean Rudy condones El Chino’s authoritarian regime, because even Keiko has said she has no plans to commute her father’s sentence or pardon him.

It’s just that she has this habit of mollifying any criticism with praise for his economic policies…

So is it really that much of stretch to conceive of her reneging on her word? To dare to suggest that the apple might not have fallen too far from the tree—that the daughter he once made First Lady at the age of 19 might show some gratitude?

Because the Shining Path and Túpac Amaru no longer terrorize the country—and that’s all that matters, right?

Kind of like how it’s safe to hang around Times Square these days…

But every city is different.

“Before making recommendations, it’s necessary to meet the city’s people, because there’s no single method that can serve all cities,” he said in Lima.

Interesting.

It makes you wonder if they’ve discussed that clever alternate theory about Rudy’s successful war on crime in New York—the one that Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner suggested back in their fun little 2005 book Freakanomics: Maybe it wasn’t the strong arm of the law that cleaned up the Big Apple. Maybe it was legal access to abortion.

Since she stated her position on that during the first leg of the campaign back in January (“I’m not in favor of legalizing abortion, I’m a woman, the mother of a family."), she probably wouldn’t take too kindly to Mr. Giuliani suddenly reconsidering his success.

So for the “violent crime, including carjacking, assault, sexual assault, and armed robbery” that—if you need a reliable source—the American State Department describes as “common in Lima”—you can expect a more conventional, piecemeal approach.

Reducing the crime rate doesn’t happen “in two or three months” Giuliani told the Peruvian media—it took years in New York.

Now show him where the squeegee kids are, Keiko.