The other Kuczynski

30/03/2011

Ok, so Kaczynski and Kuczynski aren’t exactly the same—kind of like Smith and Smyth—but you can’t deny that a headline reading 'Kuczynski could be the next President of Peru' wouldn’t get your attention. Because when you say it quickly, it sounds like the Unabomber got out of prison and somehow finagled his way into the Peruvian Presidential election…right?

Or maybe that’s just because I couldn’t figure out how to spell my last name till I was ten…

Regardless, up until recently I thought the only candidates who stood a chance of winning the Peruvian presidency were former President Alejandro Toledo, sometimes Chávez pal—Ollanta Humala, and Keiko Fujimori—the daughter of the imprisoned former President Alberto Fujimori.

Granted Kuczynski is sitting fourth, but he’s been quickly rising in the polls.

The most recent ones have Humala leading at 22%, but the Lima stock exchange crashed with that news, which has to mean he and Hugo are a little too chummy for most.

Toledo and Fujimori are both hovering around 20 and 21%, with Kucz (my nickname) or PPK (everyone else’s) coming in at 16%.

Two months ago Kucz was sitting at 5%, and as The Economist recently reminded—Alberto Fujimori polled at 5% a few weeks before the 1990 election.

So, if Americans can elect a man whose name is precariously close to Osama, why can’t Peruvians elect a man whose name is precariously close to that of an American Thoreau-reading serial killer?

Well, for one thing—maybe he and Ted might have a little too much in common for the Peruvian electorate?

No, I’m not implying Pedro Pablo is a closet serial killer; but he does hold an advanced degree from an American university—and he is… American.

Peruvians have already seen what a President with dual nationalities can do, so he’s been forced to do something about the latter: he’s announced he’s renouncing his American citizenship. And even though Toledo—for whom he formerly served as finance minister— hasn’t stopped pressing him (“he’s said he started the process, so show us the documents.”)—I don’t think it hurts his chances.

And even the former—his European/American education, which was followed by work for the World Bank, the IMF, mining corporations and investment banks...well, Toledo has a PhD from Stanford and he—by his own public admission—has lived outside of the country for more than forty years.

True, Toledo looks more like the average Peruvian than Kuczynski, and has that irresistible rags-o-riches background that helped get him elected last time—but Kucz has his flute—and his Mexican!

Ok, maybe it isn’t the Andean pan flute—maybe it is of the well-bred Julliard variety—but at least he plays traditional Andean tunes that make you forget he’s Jean-Luc Godard’s cousin.

And then there’s Miguel Ángel Cornejo—his Mexican leadership guru who mitigates Kucz’s pedantry with these pearls of wisdom:

“When you get up—smile, it doesn’t cost you anything.”

“We’re all champions.”

To some—cheesy clichés, to others—positive electioneering—we’ll see come April 10.

Kaczynski-Kuczynski…tomato-tomato

From hero to opportunist: Mexico’s would-be police chief

06/03/2011

It was a lofty moniker to bestow on a twenty-year-old. And as I fell hook, line and sinker for a narrative that had to be cooked up in Tinseltown, every rational bone in my body knew there couldn’t be a Hollywood ending.

Last October, the international media took to calling a young criminology student named Marisol Valles García, “the bravest woman in Mexico.” She took on the position of police chief in a little town called Práxedis G. Guerrero, about an hour away from Ciudad Juárez—one of the more violent places on the planet (there were 229 murders in February alone).

No hombre wanted anything to do with the traditionally male position.

It took a year for it to be filled after her predecessor’s head was left outside the police station—a warning to future intrepid applicants...

But now, according to the Chief Prosecutor in the state of Chihuahua—Jorge González Nicolás, García has crossed the border and is seeking asylum in the U.S.—the death threats from organized crime having apparently become intolerable.

Or at least one particular death threat…

On Friday the Prosecutor said García “received a threat and that justified her leaving for the United States.” Later an immigration lawyer in El Paso, Texas said she was looking into the asylum process for “personal reasons.”

No one with an ounce of sincerity could question the legitimacy of those threats; Hermila García, the thirty-eight-year-old female police chief of Meoqui—another small town in the Chihuahua province, was ambushed by hit men at the end of November. Then there was the kidnapping of Érika Gándara in late December. Gándara was literally the last police officer in the border town of Guadalupe; everyone else either resigned or went on extended sick leave.

Either of those two women might more deservedly be called “Mexico’s bravest woman”.

I say that because the cynic in me can’t help but ask: What could García have possibly thought she was getting into?

“Everybody is scared here; we’re all scared, but we’re going to trade that fear for security,” she declared after taking the job in October. The requisite photo-op showed her at her desk, working away, openly—though she did have two bodyguards.

She told the media she had no intention of going after the worst of the worst; she’d leave that to the Federal Police. She saw her role as preventative— organizing the town so its citizens wouldn’t succumb to the temptation of crime, drugs, and easy money.

At her swearing-in ceremony, the young mother also said she wanted her son to grow up in “a different community than the one we have today.”

Most—of course, thought she meant in Práxedis…

Her predecessor was decapitated...In all seriousness—what was she expecting? A few rotten eggs and a burning bag of dog….?

So now what happens?

There were supposedly 19 officers on the force when she took the job—nine of whom were women. Maybe one them will be the next step up?

Of course they’d have to accept a healthy dose of public skepticism and the end of magnanimous nicknames.

They’d have to accept there’d be a theory that—like their predecessor, they were just using the job to facilitate their passage north.